Narrative Writing
New things and change are never easy, but they can be very exciting! Beth and I dabbled with the new learning standards for reading last year; I feel that our lessons were very successful and our students learned a lot! This year our district has officially adopted the new ELA standards. We are in the middle of our narrative unit. Currently we are focusing on writing - specifically investigative journalism.
Over the summer we previewed Units of Study in Argument, Information and Narrative Writing, Grade 8: A Common Core Workshop Curriculum by Lucy Calkins and luckily our district chose this as a resource for all middle school classrooms. Each lesson is grounded in the workshop model and challenges the students to creatively use the narrative writing skills.
The first 10 days of this unit were so much fun! Mrs. Evans and Ms. Murray interrupted our classes and caused drama for the students to write about, students observed the rest of school and reported what they saw, and we learned about something students witnessed over the weekend. As the students completed these news articles, Beth and I watched students develop their abilities to truly engage their readers and we saw them enhance their writing with "grace notes" and delightful jolts".
At the end of the week we all shifted from news articles to investigative journalism. We are challenged to write about a bigger social issue and to support this writing with research and statistics. On Thursday and Friday we watched students struggle to develop a list of topic ideas for this writing. The questions always flood in - "is this too hard?", "are we moving too fast?", "are they ready for this?". I think the students are ready - this is hard, but with the help of writing partners, individual conferencing and some small group instruction I am confident that the students will produce investigative journalism articles we will all be proud of!
Over the summer we previewed Units of Study in Argument, Information and Narrative Writing, Grade 8: A Common Core Workshop Curriculum by Lucy Calkins and luckily our district chose this as a resource for all middle school classrooms. Each lesson is grounded in the workshop model and challenges the students to creatively use the narrative writing skills.
The first 10 days of this unit were so much fun! Mrs. Evans and Ms. Murray interrupted our classes and caused drama for the students to write about, students observed the rest of school and reported what they saw, and we learned about something students witnessed over the weekend. As the students completed these news articles, Beth and I watched students develop their abilities to truly engage their readers and we saw them enhance their writing with "grace notes" and delightful jolts".
At the end of the week we all shifted from news articles to investigative journalism. We are challenged to write about a bigger social issue and to support this writing with research and statistics. On Thursday and Friday we watched students struggle to develop a list of topic ideas for this writing. The questions always flood in - "is this too hard?", "are we moving too fast?", "are they ready for this?". I think the students are ready - this is hard, but with the help of writing partners, individual conferencing and some small group instruction I am confident that the students will produce investigative journalism articles we will all be proud of!