One of the big projects for this week will be completing our non-fiction books that we've been working on in Writer's Workshop. We began weeks ago deciding on a topic that each student felt they were an expert on. This was not research and writing, but a topic that each student felt he/she already knew a good bit about. Then we "wrote long" to get out all of the ideas he/she thought should be included in the book. Next, it was time to understand how real non-fiction authors take their ideas to a final form. We began by learning about the most commonly used text structures in non-fiction writing. Each student used three non-fiction text structures: descriptive, sequential, and compare and contrast. One structure was used for each one of our three body paragraphs in the book. Students have worked hard to truly revise their rough drafts to include the language of each text structure.
During revision lessons, we learn that authors add some sentences, delete some sentences and keep only some sentences from their rough draft. This is a big challenge for third grade writers because it is hard to recognize where your own writing could be better.
We have now rewritten to the point of final draft and the fun part of adding artwork and other text features like diagrams and text boxes with additional related information. If you are wondering how you can help this week....... help your child to look for some pictures to include in his/her book online. I can print B&W pictures if you email me images that the two of you have found. If your child would like color images, those will have to be printed at home and sent in to be added to the book.
It will be exciting to see these books come to completion. The students have worked hard and are very proud of their work.
No comments:
Post a Comment