Getting Started

·   Designed for 1st grade students after use of My Writing Journal (Green Book)

·   Used initially in small groups. As students understand the writing process, they can work more independently in the journal as teachers roam and provide support.

·   Teacher confers with the student about what the plan will contain.

·   Direct instruction focuses on elaboration, descriptive detail, vocabulary, sentence structures and text forms and features.

·   Known words and word families are continually added to the first pages for the student to reference during writing.

·   Use pages for the student to write down topics in narrative, information and opinion writing

Student Writing Pages

·   Students have writing tools (green cards) available.

·   Student indicates the dates for each writing session.

·   Student identifies who the audience will be before writing begins.

·   The plan is now a sketch with words and phrases

·   Only the important details go in the plan, it is not an illustration.

·   Line out mistakes, no erasers. This allows teachers to see “trails of thought”.

·   Plan is 3- part (B-M-E) or 4 parts (B-M-M-E) according to benchmarks.  

·   4-part plans focus on more details and description in the middle.

·   After the student draws the plan and retells the oral story, teacher has child add any missing details/words/phrases to the plan that are critical part(s) of the story.

·  The plan still contains speech or thought bubbles. These will become dialogue in the writing below and are still very important.

·   Writing is carried over more than one day.

·   Student self monitors by completing the “I did” portion on the bottom after every writing episode.

·   Contains evidence that instruction by the teacher has occurred (editing, revision, circled misspelled sight words, adding descriptive words or stronger vocabulary).

·   Some student work is taken through the publishing process with draft, editing and illustrations.

 

Monitoring Pages

·   Initially, and periodically the teacher scores the level of the student work in an assessment with no teacher help and indicates the dates benchmark items are consistent in the student writing on the monitoring notes pages.

·   Monitoring notes are by process, surface feature and content (narrative, explanatory/opinion.

·   Use the blank areas to monitor for other items as needed.

 

Back to top