Elizabeth Terhorst
Writers' Workshop
for
Narrative
Essays
Writers' Workshops are a wonderful way for kids to get hands on, experiential learning done in the classroom while also providing the instruction/guidance they need to execute the writing. By following the I Do, We Do, You Do method, I was able to get my students to feel more confident in their writing abilities and excited for their upcoming essay. This experience creating lecturable materials and developing interactive/experiential learning experiences demonstrated my competence as an educator to create materials as well as aid students in making text-to-text connections.
This was how we formally introduced the writing process to them. All throughout our time together, they've been asked to write increasingingly longer paragraphs called "short stories" for their vocab assessments. This piggybacked off of that and pulled together the different elements of a narrative we studied before getting to this point.
This is an activty that my mentor teacher has been doing for years, but she let me modify it to help make it fit what I had been working with the kids on. In small groups I assigned, they worked together to write a paragraph long short story that included all the elements of plot that we talked about as well as some of their SAT vocabulary words. This was another baby step into the writing process that truly benefitted the kids.
At the end of the class period, and to help them with decsion fatigue, I had them pick from one of the prompts in a low stakes exit ticket. The exit ticket was taken via Google Form, but I have attached a copy below.
