Very often, some of my students are in ELL Reading and Writing for 3 semesters. This means that I must build a repertoire of engaging texts as well as writing assignments.
This year I have added a few exciting resources to help me upgrade my Writing Workshop: Texts and Lessons for Content-Area Writing by Nancy Steineke and Harvey Smokey Daniels, the latest edition of Nancy Atwell’s In The Middle and Linda Rief’s Read Write Teach. In addition, I am following a great new blog: Two Writing Teachers. There is one more resource on the way. But more of that when it arrives.
#1
We always break open our new composition books with lists of topics the students are interested in exploring and writing about – Atwell’s writing territories. However, this year they wrote their first list on a territory map – a place that has become their own, personal space: bedroom, basketball court, beach and book shelves
For the first couple of assignments, to get the ideas flowing and build confidence, the students chose topics from their territories. I now call these assignments A Slice of Life which is a delightful idea I read about in Two Writing Teachers’ blog. We even display an anchor chart so the students can easily refer to the expectations of this assignment.
I then looked to Steineke and Daniels for ideas on first writing assignments.
#2
A getting to know you interview (p.26). This was a timely assignment since we had just discussed how asking high level questions deepens thinking, discussion and understanding complex texts. This was a perfect assignment to begin generating interesting, high level questions.
#3
Students charted their own identity maps (p.32) and even managed to surprise each other with some of their personality traits.
#4
Finally, they wrote a random autobiography.
How do you awaken the writing muse?
