Writing Goals Clip Chart, TpT Sale, and a Freebie!

School starts for me in 9 days! Eeeeek! No matter how much time I spend at school I never quite feel ready and I always find more to do. I will be sure to share some pictures once the room is compete and ready for my kiddos.

Today I wanted to share a cute Writing Goals Clip Chart I made for writing centers. Check the picture out below. It is a goals chart that students will use as they work at the writing center. They will choose a focus based on how their writing is progressing. I will be talking to the students during writing conferences to ensure they are selecting appropriate goals and they may change their goals as they achieve success with writing skills. I created the goals with first grade skills in mind, but I can personalize the wording to work for your classroom and students. Click here to get the writing goals chart.

I am also so excited to announce the TpT Back to School Sale!!! On August 3rd and 4th all items in my store will be 28% off with the promo code BTS15. Be sure to check out my store and other stores to grab some super deals! My TpT cart is already full of items that I can't wait to swoop up during the sale… only one more day!!

To celebrate the start of another fabulous year, I am offering a great back to school FREEBIE! I have created interactive calendar forms that my students use to increase engagement during our calendar time. Grab them here! Enjoy!!

Stay tuned for my classroom reveal coming soon! Happy Teaching!

How to Draw Farm Animals- Writing Center!

I am so excited to introduce my newest Draw and Write creation! How to Draw Farm Animals- Writing Center will be a packet I use with my students at the beginning of the year. This unit will be great for introducing how our writing center works. Check out what comes in this 30+ page packet below.

I have two versions of the draw and write. I have used both in my classroom. I will start the year with the draw and write with fewer lines (on the front) and then as my students progress we will move to the two sided version with the lines on the back.

Get the pack here! Be sure to check out my How to Draw Ocean Animals Writing Center, and How to Draw Polar Animals Writing Center!

Happy Teaching!

How to Draw Polar Animals- Writing Center

I am very excited to share a fun writing center that I have come up with. My students have been transitioning from narrative to explanatory/informative writing and I wanted to continue this during my centers time. Writing centers have traditionally been very open to student choice of topic in my classroom. For this new center, I wanted to provide my students with enough support to be able to write an explanatory piece independently.

To keep the students engaged and hook them into this style of writing, I decided to use the wintery theme of polar animals as a subject for the center. Each week I introduce a new polar animal and provide my students with a word bank and basic facts about the animal. The students then have some information to use when creating their own sentences. These resources are displayed for them at the writing center.

The students learn how to draw the animal using the steps on the page. They practice following the illustrated steps, and read the sentences to help them with their drawing.

Then the students write about the animal using the resources and knowledge they have gained. We talk a lot about not copying from the fact page, and instead using the word bank to help create sentences of their own. The writing center has been so engaging and my students have created quality informational writing using it. You can get it here!

Here are some examples from the writing center:

I have some fun art projects to implement once the students learn about the various polar animals. Check out our cute walrus project!

Check out the Arctic Fox and Antarctic Penguin  art projects!

Happy Teaching!!

Narrative Writing Rubric

Happy Sunday! Today I wanted to share the narrative writing rubric that I use in my classroom. Students need to know where their writing stands to understand how to make improvements. I created this rubric to show the students what is expected at each rubric level. Our district has provided us with a teacher rubric for scoring purposes, but we did not have student examples at each performance level. I wanted to post the expectations in my classroom so I decided to create the samples myself with illustration expectations as an additional component.

Our class has discussed each performance level and we have had many conversations about the similarities and differences. We have looked at student writing exemplars (teacher created versions, too!) and have graded them together using the rubric. My students have grasped this concept quite well and I have observed a strong drive to achieve the next level in many of them. The biggest challenge was getting the students to see that both the illustration and the writing needs to be adequate to achieve a score on the rubric. Some of them of course focused mostly on the pictures at first!

Achieving mastery of the first grade narrative writing standard would score a 3 on this particular rubric. Four is considered beyond, two is approaching, one is needing improvement within the standard.

Happy Teaching!

Writer's Workshop Resources

At the beginning of the year I decided that my students needed resources to assist them in becoming independent writers. I developed some helpful pages to put into their independent writing folders. I include a mini word wall that matches our larger version in the classroom. I also include a page of "School Words" to help them spell words related to school that are commonly used. I also created a book titled "Words I Want to Remember" this book is for students to write their friends' names as well as other words they will use frequently throughout the year. There is a writer's checklist that can be used with dry erase marker as well as a practice page to try words with dry erase marker before writing them on their paper. Lastly, I created a page of strategies that good writers use. These are the same strategies we have in our classroom on an anchor chart. These resources have diminished the "How do I spell…" question and have provided my students with more writing independence. Click here for the link to the resources. Click here to grab a freebie of the writing paper I use.

Happy Teaching!