Kids WRITE the Darndest Things! (And a Freebie!)

I am excited to share some opinion writing with you tonight!  (I am also still giggling over a cup of coffee as I read through today’s writing pieces from Daily 5. I hope you can join me in a laugh or two!)

Our anchor chart was a powerful visual aide for my struggling writers. For many students, writing does not come naturally.  They have to work at it.  For these kiddos, knowing where they are going in their paper and how to get there is critical!  I taught opinion writing in the same way I taught informational writing to my students – through lots and lots of modeling, great pieces of literature and read alouds, and TONS of oral writing and discussion! 

Here is the writing chart we used as we started to learn about the structure of an opinion writing piece for our first grade classroom!

Also, since this is a teaching blog and not a fairy-tale blog, I want to share three pieces of writing with you that I’m pulling from my teacher bag tonight: one from a high level writer in my room, an on-target writer, and a struggling writer. We are keeping it real, people! 🙂 I hope you can see that with a simple visual aide, tons of time to practice writing, and lots of teacher modeling during mini-lessons, ANY student can be a successful writer! 🙂
Disclosure:   These are writing pieces that my students worked on completely independently during their Daily 5 Work on Writing time today.  There was not a teacher to look over their shoulder, suggest corrections, or help with spelling.  (That teacher was at the small group reading table saying “a-r says ‘ar’ for what felt like a billion and twenty times today…)   😉
 I also hope you can join me in laughter as we read this little firstie’s writing piece from today! I told him it rocked my socks off! 

Did you know that if you do not learn to read  you will be 36 years old and still in kindergarten? Haha! And apparently, you will still be reading a Level A DRA book! 😉
Here is another opinion piece from a student who wrote an opinion on why girls are better than boys! (The handwriting makes it a bit hard to read:  “I will tell you if boys or girls are better. Girls are better. Girls are better because they smell pretty. Girls are better because they learn more stuff than boys. Girls are better because they do not have armpit hair. These are reasons why girls are better.) LOL – love!!
Another opinion on whether music is better or art (or Moozick). 😉 (Also, in his last reason, I had to ask him why he wrote hello hie over and over again…apparently, it is the name of the song they learned this week in moozick.)   He is adorable! 🙂

I’ve whipped up a sample anchor chart for you to use if you wish to use this idea with your students! (You can see that my on target and struggling writer color-coded their writing as they worked. This helps my students stay on track with the structure of their writing piece.) 
 This poster would also be a great resource for students to place into their writing binders or folders for reference! You can download this poster for free by clicking HERE or on the picture below and downloading it from Google Docs! 🙂
The prompts my students wrote about today during Daily 5 came from my Ready to Write! Test Prep & Practice for Lil’ Common Core Writers pack in my TpT Store.  Students simply chose a picture card and followed the chart hanging at the front of our room during their Work on Writing time for independent work this week.  They cannot get enough of these picture cards and there are enough to last for a few weeks – and cards for each type of Common Core writing! 🙂   Check it out HERE or click on the pictures below:

Thank you SO much for stopping by and checking out our recent opinion essays! We are having so much fun working on our writing skills and sharing our progress with you! I’m headed downstairs to run on the treadmill…I have been sitting at the computer for way too long tonight! 🙂

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4 Comments

  1. At your Work on Writing do your students have to write on a topic they have chosen or do you let them have a choice on choosing a topic or writing whatever? Currently my class has had "free" writing at work on writing. They love writing books with another friend. But I really want to "tighten" it up and have them independently "work on writing"… Use those skills we have been talking about. If that makes sense 🙂 I am LOVING your sharing int he journey of WBT Writing!! Keep it coming!

    Chelsea
    Kickin It Whole Brain In Texas

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