I was approached a few weeks ago by the lovely staff of Grammarly.com to post about writing---to inspire others on how to achieve excellent writing. It took me several days to get a light bulb moment! Therefore this post is brought to you by the Superb Writers’ Blogathon. In partnership with Grammarly grammar checker, this series is bringing helpful hints to aspiring superb writers all across the world wide web.
Please check out our sponsor:
grammar checker
It's official. I've check out of third grade and onto summer after this weekend. Luckily I only have 3 1/2 days of school left and a small detailed list of things I need to accomplish before then. With that in mind I want to share what one of my main focuses was this year... SELF CHECKING!
I really strive to
try to teach students to self check their work and become more....lets say responsible for their answers as well as their writing. I'd like to say that I think I did a pretty good job however next year I already know I need to take the bull by the horns a tad bit earlier. I really need to reinforce the concept of double checking your work before you turn it in as well as rereading to make sure things make sense.
In my building we have a
writing teacher who comes every other Wednesday for about 30 minutes. She works on things according to grade level expectations and does a lot of preparation in writing for our state wide testing. One of the greatest things I learned from her this year was teaching children the purpose of their writing so that they would understand why the little details are so important. Every time she visited she would ask the students who is going to read your writing and why are they going to read it? She made the the students in my class feel as if their writing was
important even if they wrote one sentence answers on a line! They loved it!
Some things we talked about
*I need good hand writing SO my friends and teacher can read it.
*I need to spell things correctly SO it will make sense to others.
*I need to use periods SO my reader will do when to stop reading.
It turned into not necessarily giving orders to kids saying you must do this you must do that but more of "well if we can't understand it then its kinda useless" (maybe that is too harsh?) but in reality if you are writing and no one can determine what the heck you are talking about then why bother... right?
I thought it was genius and hey maybe I'm clueless but without giving detailed examples to our students on WHY these things are important WHY are they going to care? It is common sense isn't it? And now that I've found it I'm ecstatic to incorporate this into my teaching next fall.
I hope you take this to mind and can get your kids as excited about writing (even short answer questions) as my kiddos were. What are some strategies you use in your room to help kids understand WHY we do what we do? I'd love to hear other ideas!
Here are some awesome editing and checking things I've found!
Writing Assessment Checklist
VIA
Color Editing
VIA
Rainbow Checking
VIA
COPS Poster Freebie
VIA
and I'll leave could't leave this out!!
Thanks for reading!
3 1/2 days until freedom!! What are some ways you ensure your kiddos have self-checked their writing? What do you use? Please share!!
If you like this post please vote for us! Click on the link below and find MissThirdGrade by hitting "CTRL (then) F" then type in MissThirdGrade! Thanks:)
