Earth Day Writing Freebie

I'm a big fan of Earth Day.  I think looking out for our world is HUGE and it needs to happen now.  Each and every one of us needs to do what we can to help this place be around for our grandchildren and our grandchildren's grandchildren.

I always celebrate every Earth Day with plenty of good literature.  Here are some of my favorite children's books with an Earth Day theme:

          

Earth Day is an ABC book, and makes a great introduction to the concept of protecting the environment.

The Lorax, is classic Seuss!  He tells about a mystical land of fantasy, which, in true Seuss fashion, a much deeper real story.  Even my second graders understand this valuable lesson.

The Wump World is a fun book to read to the children and NOT show the illustrations (even the cover) until the children have had a chance to show the Wumps and Pollutians that they visualized while listening to the story.  Another great story about a fantasy world with very real lessons!

This one is a new discovery to me, and my new "Earth Day Favorite". 

A River Ran Wild is a story that dates back to the days the Native Americans ruled this area, and respected the earth.  It continues through European settlers, the industrial age, and attempts to clean up the river.  This book is based on a local river, which makes it near and dear to my heart, but it's a valuable message about protecting our world.  My students became very upset when they saw what happened to the beautiful river!

See THIS BLOG POST for more about this book, and an art activity to go with it.

You can click the images above for a link to Amazon, to learn more about these books.

After reading, I intend to have the children do some opinion writing and/ or explanatory/ informational writing based on what they have learned about protecting the environment.

Here's a collection of writing paper with the Earth Day theme that I'll be using.  

Come over to Elementary Matters to download this freebie.

How are you honoring Earth Day this year?

Twelve Ways to Celebrate Writing

As a blogger, I know the power of the audience.  It's you readers out there that make me want to blog, and make me want to make quality blog posts!  Don't our children need this same sense of audience to motivate their writing?  I think so!

Here are some ideas for celebrating the children's writing:

1.  Share in Class!  Have one child read his/ her story to the class.  Class is expected to listen and ask questions that "prove they were listening."  This works well when the child is "mid-story" in order to get ideas on where to go from this point.

2.  Small Group Shares! Have children work in groups of 2 or three to share their stories as above.

3.  Share Your Best Sentence!  I like this one because there's usually enough time for each child to share one sentence.  If the children know it's coming, that helps motivate the children to work on the quality of their sentences.

4.  Share With Someone Else in the Building!  There are lots of adults in an elementary school who would be thrilled to "play along" with this one!  It's a great motivator to promise a child that he can read his story to the custodian, or the secretary, or the cafeteria workers.  It's a win-win!

Come on over to Elementary Matters to see more ways to celebrate the writing of your students!

The Writing Progress for Elementary Kids

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I recently spent a few days in a writing workshop hosted in my district that featured both poetry and non-fiction writing.  In the workshop we discussed the merits of different writing programs such as 6 Traits and ideas taken from Lucy Calkins, but spent a lot of time on developing mini lessons and how to make the most of writing conferences.  Amid the discussions that we had in how we presented topics and edited with students, we never talked about the writing process as a whole.  We discussed the different steps of the writing process, but as we talked in groups or in pairs, I noticed something that was universal among us.  We all added 'extra' steps into the writing process.  Even more interesting to me was that these 'extra' steps were added at the same exact place by each teacher.  We may not have referred to them with the same vocabulary, but they were there, just the same.  I identified 12 steps needed to help students improve their writing:

Step 1:  Brainstorm with a graphic organizer.

Step 2:  Begin illustrating and label  the ‘nouns’

Step 3:  Begin writing a beginning, middle, and end.  

Step 4:  Conference with student.

Step 5:  Student edits.

Step 6:  Student rereads and edits again if necessary.    

    This can be done with a partner.

Step 7:  Conference with student to revise the story.

Step 8:  The student rereads to make further changes

    and checks for clarity of the story.

Step 9:  The student begins to rewrite the story to work

    towards a final draft.

Step 10:  The student rereads for clarity again.

Step 11:  Add details to the illustration to help tell the   
     story.

Step 12:  Publishing

Here are those same 12 steps in a poster for you!

I know that realizing this validated not only me as a teacher, but also me as a writer.  I had never thought to break down and analyze the way I taught the writing process.  I hope that this helps you strengthen your writer's workshop like it has me.  It is incredible when something that you have thought about makes a connection with such strength that it changes the teacher's heart inside you.  Here it is, the middle of summer, but thinking through this process was so profound that I know it has already changed the way I will look at my writer's workshop when this next year begins.

Here are 3 other things to remember....Maybe these can be the beginning of a few anchor charts for you.

Jennifer Ayers is an 18 year veteran teacher and has experience teaching in both suburban and inner-city schools.  Out of 18 years, she has been a lead teacher in some capacity for 15 of those 18 years.  She has taught in a multi-age Montessori classroom, has taught 1st, 2nd, and 4th grades, and has also been a full-time reading interventionist/Title 1 teacher.  Jennifer earned her master's degree in K-12 Education at Tusculum College in Greeneville, Tennessee in 2000 and also graduated in 2008 with her Education Specialists Degree in Supervision and Administration from Tennessee Technological University.  You may recognize Jennifer from Really Good Stuff's annual blog contest as she was selected to judge the competition.  You can find Jennifer at her website, Best Practices 4 Teaching or at her freebie website Best Practices 4 Teaching Freebie Pages.