Schedule Spotlight Series- Writing

We're linking up with Kelli from Castles and Crayons for another week of her Schedule Spotlight Series!

This week's topic is writing and I will admit, I have never seemed to find any one thing that works for me. I have changed how I have taught writing every year that I have been teaching. This year is no different. With writing being a 'big push' in Common Core, I sat down to brainstorm how I would tackle writing this year. Below I will explain what I came up with. But please keep in mind....I haven't even tried this yet! It could be a huge disaster or a huge success but I won't even know until late September if I like how it is working or not. So here it goes:

Last week I wrote that I incorporate my writer's workshop into Daily 5. I will be doing the same this year. However, I am not leaving one of my mini-lessons for writing. I am leaving a 30 minute block that will include a whole-group lesson, modeling, and independent practice for my kiddos.  

This year our grade level decided to focus on 1 specific writing type per quarter- 

Quarter 1: Narrative Writing

Quarter 2: Opinion Writing

Quarter 3: Informative Writing

Quarter 4: Review, Shared Research Writing

So, while we may only be working on 1 piece of writing a quarter, I will be incorporating focus lessons on the 6 + 1 traits as well. I am hoping it will look something like this:

We spend the first few weeks each quarter learning about the writing type, brainstorming ideas and beginning our writing pieces. Then, the next week I might focus on how to add voice to our writing. We will then go back and visit what we had previously written to revise and edit for voice. The following week we may discuss organization. Again, we will go back into the same writing piece and revise and edit for organization. I hope that by the end of each quarter, each student will have a strong piece of writing to reflect each writing type. 

This WILL NOT be the only writing they do! During work on writing, I am planning to give them smaller story prompts to work on. I will be able to see if they are able to apply our whole group lessons to their work independently. This will vary, as some weeks they will be able to have 'free writing' in their journals. 

My fingers are crossed that this will work! I guess I will need to follow-up to this post in a few months! Below I thought I would leave you with all of the writing resources I have gathered and collected to use this year (Thank you TpT!) Maybe you will find them useful in your classroom as well.

To set up work on writing in Daily 5:

To set up the foundation of Writer's Workshop (my 30 minute instructional block):

Common Core aligned teaching packs for each writing type:

Common Core Informational Text Writing (Grades 1-3)

Common Core Opinion Writing (Grades 1-3) &
Common Core Narrative Writing (Grades 1-3).....Coming soon!

Mini-Lessons for teaching writing traits:

Be sure to link up and let us know how you teach writing in your classroom!