Helping Writers Self-Check Their Work

Hello again from the Crazy Critter Café! Thanks for stopping by!

 

This year I've struggled with getting my first graders to self-check their writing before I conference with them. We use graphic organizers to help get their thoughts on paper, but they're still struggling with capitalization, punctuation, and writing overall "good" sentences. I feel like I need to re-teach myself how to teach writing every year! Is it just me or anybody else feel the same way???

 

Last year I introduced my CAPS poster, based on the Dr. Seuss character. I thought this would be a fun visual for students to use. This anchor chart helped remind students of qualities found in a "good" sentence.

This year I decided to create another anchor chart to go along with the CAPS poster. This chart is more like a step-by-step process to help students write sentences.

One day I was describing strategies good writers use and I thought it would make a good supplement chart to our already existing CAPS poster. Students WRITE their sentence. They READ it. Then they CHECK IT {using the CAPS poster} and then they FIX IT if their sentence lacks any of the characteristics on the CAPS poster.

 

 It's working! I see students now glancing up at the charts when they're working on a writing activity! Anchor charts.....success! 

 

 

Another idea I had to help students become excited and more "into" their writing was to create thematic writing paper.

Of course, this isn't something we use everyday, but these thematic writing templates get students away from the plain ol' primary writing paper and gets them motivated to write on "fancy" paper.

 I also use these templates to post the final draft on bulletin boards with a cute, related craftivity.

 

You can check out the thematic writing templates HERE. 

 

It'll soon be time to start planning Christmas Activities!

I'll use this creative writing pack during the month of December. This holiday pack includes various graphic organizers, blank templates, and many topics for narrative, opinion, and informative writing.

 

Again, I'm trying to keep students excited about writing by using the templates they can color. Some of them I'll even add some glitter to and "sparkle" them up a little for a cute Christmas display!

 

You can check out the Christmas Writing Pack HERE.

Thanks for stopping by the café! Hope you all have a wonderful, relaxing Thanksgiving break. Take time to think of all the things you are thankful for ~ big and small. We tend to look over the small things in our lives, and they're usually our biggest blessings!

 

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

 

Go Fish Graphing with Slappy Hands

Happy Spring everybody!

 I'd better enjoy the nice temps this weekend because the forecast is calling for more sleet next week!?!? Maybe it'll bypass us this time. Not sure if I can handle more makeup days. :-)

 With the spring season comes up and down temps and POLLEN...and lots of it here in NC. Forget the car wash, I'm wastin' my time. Aside from the crazy temps and yellow allergy dust, one thing that doesn't slow us down during this time of year is going fishing.

Our class talked about signs of spring and things we like to do during this season. I created this Go Fish graphing activity~actually to use during Read Across America Day / Dr. Seuss' Birthday. But, you know how that goes...a thousand cute activities to fit into one day, then stretched out over one week...it just doesn't all get done! So I thought this little fishing activity would fit in perfectly with our spring activities!

First I found some adorable little fish from The Clip Art Stand {found here}. Since I only created 7 rows for the graph, {DOWNLOAD THE GRAPH HERE} I made sure to count out the fish for each group before they began "fishing" so the numbers would match the graphing questions. I used 4 GREEN, 5 RED, 6 BLUE, and 2 YELLOW.

 I put each set of fish in a bowl {next time I'll be sure to get some fish bowls from the Dollar Tree}.

Kids used slappy hands {found at dollar stores, Oriental Trading Company} to take turns "catching" their fish. As a fish was caught, each student at the table would color a space for that fish. They sorted the "caught" fish by color. This helped them check their graphing data.

As a class, we answered the questions by looking back at our data. I also had the class create some of their own questions based on the graph. I was amazed at some of the questions they came up with!

I have to give Go Fish Graphing with slappy hands a "high five" {literally, haha}. Using slappy hands definitely made this simple graphing activity much more exciting!

I would love to make more graphs like this using different fish designs to place in the math center to reinforce graphing skills. I don't think the kids would get bored with this too fast.

Once we finished this activity I wasn't quite sure what to do with the used slappy hands. Kids kept asking if they could have them. Hmmmm.... 20 kids, 5 slappy hands. That could be a problem. Then I remembered the Class Dojo app has a, what I call, "random picker button".

I used that button to randomly select 5 students. If the chosen student's clip {I use the clip chart to help with behavior management.} was in green {ready to learn}, purple {great job}, or pink {outstanding}, they would be the lucky winners of the slappy hands.

Problem solved.

Good luck using this in your classroom if you decide to do a little "slappy hand" go fishing! I'd love to hear your comments about how you use this!

Thanks for stopping by the Crazy Critter Café!