Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Writing in the New Year

As we came back to school in 2010, the children began writing about their holiday memories. Today as I walked through one of the kindergarten classrooms Lexie was sharing her original piece in a closing meeting of the Writers' Workshop. (She's quite an artist, don't you think?)
Presents overflowed the tree and he brought us candy in our stockings and he brought us Pez and a giant marshmallow.

The mini-lessons for this first week back have been about revising work by adding an interesting and engaging beginning to your small moment, as seen in the charts to the left. The children have been adding examples of some of their great beginnings to the charts.

So today, after Lexie finished reading her original piece, she pulled out a second piece, the piece she had written today, which included her revision - the addition of a new, delightful beginning (below) to her story.
Once upon a Christmas night, I heard a bang! and bells. I sprang from my bed at the stairs. My family was waiting for me. When I went down Santa I saw.

Can't wait to see what her ending looks like!

2 comments:

Melanie Holtsman said...

At the beginning of kindergarten, I beamed with pride at each word I recognized in my children's writing. After the holidays things all seems to come together where you can really read each word and actually follow a story line. So much fun! What a difference from when I was in kindergarten and were working only on alphabet coloring pages and scissor skills! Thanks for sharing!

Maria Mallon & Cheryl Dillard said...

Isn't it wonderful when you see a mini lesson or series of mini lessons come together and help to spark such a beautiful piece of work...what an awesome writer Lexie is!! MM