Finishing Our Unit

Emily needed very little help on her book. Other than a few reminders about punctuation, she worked independently for days on her 10-page book! She told me that her grandma loves birds and she couldn’t wait to take it home to share with her! Allowing students to self-select their own topics is SO motivational.

Help from Lucy Calkins

This is a very helpful post from Lucy on getting started with Units of Study!

https://blog.heinemann.com/getting-started-with-the-units-of-study

All About Dogs

All About Books

I am using my If...Then...Curriculum book to teach "All About Books". The kids LOVE this unit, and are writing so much! We started the unit by choosing an animal that they know "all about".  This was an easy way to get them started writing. One student chose an obscure animal (a frog fish), but during conferencing decided that he really didn't know that much about the animal, so he picked again. Several of my students incorporated a "how to" page in their book!

How to Take Care of a Baby

Roller Coaster by Marla Frazee

This is one of my favorites for teaching writing. The illustrations are priceless and it is a great "small moment" book.