aubree teaches: graphic organizers for writing

When I moved from kindergarten to 3rd grade, teaching writing was the biggest adjustment I had to make. I suddenly went from teaching kids letter formation to teaching kids how to form paragraphs and write in multiple styles.
Let's all face it: teaching writing is hard.
My first year, I honestly just winged it. I did my best but I know I did a disservice to my students by not giving them strong explicit writing instruction. Writing is a skill that must be honed and it does not come naturally to many people. So, I set about trying to come up with ways to streamline writing in my classroom and make it strong. Our classroom started engaging in a 5-step writing process.

Each writing project takes us two weeks. Students work on writing assignments twice a week during stations and they meet with me for conferencing on Fridays. This means they have 2 station times the first week to complete pre-write & first draft. They meet with me the first Friday to check their pre-write/first draft and make notes. They have 2 station times the second week to complete edit/revise & final draft. They meet with me the last Friday to assess themselves based on the rubric and publish on SeeSaw!

Let's walk through each step we take.

1. Pre-Write

Each time we start a new writing project, students receive a pre-write organizer on Monday. I model how to fill it in by doing one of my own. I have found that especially in third grade, students need some kind of template to help show them how the writing should flow. Writing instruction from 2nd to 3rd is a HUGE leap. Often we expect students to pull out a notebook or lined paper and start writing with a beautiful flow, and it just doesn't happen that way. An organizer can help students collect their writing ideas & thoughts and organize them (imagine that!). Eventually, they will be organizing their writing with less and less assistance.

2. First Draft

There are many different ways to move to the first draft stage. You can have students write drafts in their writer's notebook or on a sheet of paper. My student's free-write in their journals so our writing process drafts are on plain notebook paper. Again, you must model how to transfer writing from graphic organizer to paper. Students aren't going to just know how to take what they've compiled and turn it into paragraphs. I pull out my pre-write organizer and write mine for them. I have students bring theirs to the carpet and write the first few lines altogether so I can monitor and assist. It takes several weeks for students to be even a little independent moving step to step. Then, you start a new type of writing and start again. The great news is that students already have their writing in order with a topic sentence, transition words, and conclusion sentence. Once my students had completed a few months of these writing projects, I began to notice them transferring these skills to their own independent writing.

3. Edit & Revise

Editing and revising is a weekly lesson. It is always our Monday morning mini-lesson, all year. That's because the mechanics of writing are ridiculously difficult. No matter how many grammar lessons you do, students don't always transfer that information to their own writing. That is why it is important to have students edit and revise their writing with you. I edit and revise MY writing but I also have students share out pieces of their writing to edit & revise as well. We utilize my favorite instructional app, Nearpod, to do this work. Here are the checklists my students use for editing & revising their work.

We spend several weeks going over every step of the checklists and practicing with actual writing from our work. These laminated checklists are available to students when they are at writing station working on step 3: edit and revise.

4. Final Draft

Now that they've collected their ideas, organized their writing, written it out in paragraph form, met with the teacher, edited and revised, students are ready to write their very final draft. I try my best to offer my students "fancy" paper for their final drafts. This makes publishing feel more important and special.

Meeting with the Teacher

There are many ways to set up your writing conferences. For my first year, I used a simple slideshow that rotated through student numbers. When a student's number popped up on the screen, they brought their writing materials to my table to meet with me. Students have the writing rubrics in a photo album on their iPad. This makes it easy for them to bring the iPad and look at the rubric as we have our discussion. I encourage students to score themselves based on the rubric. This really helps them start to analyze their own writing.

This last year, I started having students sign up for a conference group based on what they thought they needed to work on.

The groups change based upon the skills I notice students struggling with or the specific skills needed for the type of writing. Students place a sticky note with their name under the group they choose. Then, I create groups and call them over a bit at a time. I love this system because it allows me to help the kids assist each other and peer edit in a small group setting.

It doesn't really matter how you set up your conference times, as long as you have set aside time to sit with students and their writing. Each conference, I pull out a bright lined sticky note to stick on the student's pre-write. Every adjustment we talk about gets added to the sticky note. This way, the student has all their advice right in front of them when they move to their editing phase. I can also look back to the sticky note when we are doing our final scoring and make sure students made the adjustments we discussed.

Some common advice I find myself giving my students?