Have I Got A Book For You!

We are finishing up Bend II in Lucy Calkin's Second Grade Unit of Study: Writing About Reading - Opinions.  In this unit, we have been writing letters which persuade our classmates, friends, and family members to read our favorite books.

Using this chart, we wrote about the characters, best part, lesson learned, and illustrations (among other things).

Andrew wrote about Janell Cannon's Stellaluna.  The main reason he likes this book is because of the lesson it teaches.  Andrew writes a short summary but doesn't give away the ending - which entices others to read the book.  Here is the checklist he used to self-assess his work.

Our class wrote about a variety of favorite children's books: Bad Kitty, Zoomer, Wolf, Three Hens and a Peacock, Mr. Peabody's Apples,and Snow Day just to name a few.

What a wonderful way to encourage each other to read - read - read!

Improving Narrative Writing by Setting Goals

Today we taught Session 7 from the Second Grade Narrative Writing Unit of Study by Lucy Calkins.  This comes at the end of Bend I and is the perfect time to reflect on what we put in our writing and think about what we can do better.  This lesson, in fact, is about setting goals for your writing.  We passed out the narrative writing checklist and the pre-assessment on demand writing piece that students produced at the beginning of this unit.  They could already see where their writing has improved.

Here are some examples of student work along with the rubrics that the teachers used to evaluate the pieces.

Next, we talked about setting goals.  How could we use the rubric (and narrative checklist for 2nd and 3rd grade) to make our writing better?  Students wrote their goals for themselves on sticky notes and placed them on our Jot Lot.  

Some of the goals were right on target.

My goal is to develop my story.
My goal is to work on transition words.
Write less jumbled together.
My goal is to work on my ending.
My goal is to work on my lead.

My goal... to add more pages.
My goal is that I want to get more on the second grade track.
My goal is to work on my ending.
My goal is to bring characters to life.
I need to write more excitement.

We're looking forward to Bend II and improving our stamina.  Like an athlete, we will be exercising our writing every day to develop our skills and I'm sure, achieve our goals!