Fifth Grade Writing Community

Last week and the weeks coming, we are going to be working on creating a writing community. What is a writing community? This is a place where all students are going to get many opportunities to write, share, reflect, collaborate, and learn to communicate about their writing as well as classmates. We are working on building a mutual respect, honesty, and trust with each other, so we can all feel comfortable sharing and receiving feedback. This isn't as easy as it sounds. Sometimes it can be scary and very stressful to share our personal words, but our goal is for everybody to feel at ease and enthusiastic about sharing and writing.

The first steps in our writing community was to talk about what it is and what it will be like. Ask your student what kinds of things we will do in our community. We also have really worked on getting to know each other better. Yes, these kids have been together since Pre-K, but does everybody hang out together all the time? What about the kids that have moved into our school? We did an activity called "Two Truths and a Lie" and had fun getting to know each other better. If you have time, ask your student what they learned about a classmate or their teacher. Lastly, we are working on how to generate ideas by reading different types of books and jotting ideas in our writing notebooks. The first set of books we read were considered to be twisted fairy tales. After reading them, we wrote ideas down about other fairy tales we could make different and then wrote about them. Your kids had some really awesome ideas and they were so excited about writing! Ask them what fairy tale they twisted! Next up, we are going to get ideas from our own lives and experiences.

To become better writers, we need practice and what better way to practice than to write without being corrected, without requiring a specific topic and length, and to be able to just write whether it be lists, ideas, or stories.

One of the Iowa Core standards requires that students be able to write over extended periods of time. We are also working on our stamina for writing; we are starting with 8 - 10 minute blocks of consistent writing. This means no stopping, no looking around and saying "I'm done", not getting up and sharpening pencils, getting drinks, or using the restroom. It is silent writing. Even if you run out of things to say in your current story, it means writing new ideas in the "Idea" section or writing lists.

This is the best time and kind of writing! Encourage your students to write at home by asking them to write you a list, write a short paragraph about their favorite things, have them write interview questions and interview you, or write a journal entry of their day! Make writing a shared, fun activity together.

#writingcommunity