Infomational Writing - the Second Bend

One the great things about life at Chets Creek is that we take professional development very seriously.  We often provide professional development on the clock but there is a non-negotiable expectation - you are expected to be engaged and to participate.  Last week first grade met for a day of professional development while our students were treated to a special all-Resource day.  The students really look forward to their special day, and for us, it means no lesson plans for subs!

The day always starts with a demonstration lesson.  Maria Mallon hosted all 14 of us in her classroom for a Lucy-inspired (Lucy Calkins) lesson.  We are just beginning the second bend of Informational Writing.  Maria is our grade level lead so her job is to stay just a few lessons ahead of the pack so she can prepare us for what is to come.  She and Reading Coach Melanie Holtsman worked together to provide the perfect day.

The thing that always impresses me about Maria is that her classroom is just so joyful.  I can just imagine being a little first grader sitting on the floor at her feet.  I would believe every single thing she said!  She is so genuine and it just pulls you right in. I just feel good in her room. It just makes me smile.  Of course, there is also a lot of learning going on.  Her rituals and routines are such perfection that you feel like you want to rewind and figure out,  "How did she do that?"  The children transition with such ease.  On this day she transitioned with a song for fluency.  The kids went soundlessly to their seats on the floor and she started...  First she told them how incredible they were and how proud she was.  Then she launched into the gist of the lesson - which was about using all the tools in the room - the charts and rubrics and mentor texts and words around the room...  Then it was off to writing.  The children look like busy little bees.  Every single child is engaged in the process of writing and the only sounds you hear are productive conversations between partners. Maria does drive by conferences, walking around purposefully stopping to chat with a few students, asking purposeful questions and just generally supervising the flow of the workshop.  Before you know it, it's time to Close and the children quietly put all their supplies away and in a blink are back on the carpet.  When they are settled Maria reads the informational rubric and challenges the children to work toward the second grade standards.  You can see the excitement in their little bodies as they already begin to rise to the occasion.  I think I want to be a first grader again in Maria's class!

Then it's to the conference room where we debrief the lesson with Melanie, commenting on the things that we really liked in the lesson, asking Maria questions about things we still wonder about.  I think each of us questions how we  would do the same lesson and we make a mental list of things we want to try or change tomorrow.  That's what "starting with a demo" is all about.

Then it's to the work of the day.  As we wait for the Calkins Reading Units to be released this summer, we know we need to ramp up our reading instruction. Melanie digs in and begins to challenge us to push the continuum of thinking in our classrooms.  She frames the work that will be expected in second and third and fourth grade that is changing with the Common Core so that we begin to define a path from where we are to where we need to go.  Melanie doesn't give us the answers.  She doesn't spoon feed us but challenges us to think.  We don't need dummy-proof curriculums. We don't need scripted Core Curriculums but we do need teachers that think.  We need teachers who can look at the data, but so much more than that - teachers who can read the room, who KNOW their students as learners and from that wealth of information can take the standards and define the teaching that needs to be done. That's what will transforms education.

How to eat a candy cane

As we return from the Thanksgiving break, it is time to turn our thoughts toward the winter holidays.  The children had a treat this morning as we started writing a new "how to" piece.  We brought out Jelly Belly-flavored candy canes and talked about the different ways that we get the shrink-wrapped paper off the candy cane - Do you tear or cut? Do you take all the paper off at one time or do you unwrap a little at a time so your hands don't get sticky?  Then we talked about the different ways that people eat a candy candy - Do you lick or bite?  Do you start with the stick or the curve?  Do you lick it to a point?  After talking about it, we decided to eat a candy cane and then write about the best way to eat a candy cane.  Below is just one example of a child's procedural writing.

First you go get a candy cane.  Then you take the paper off.  Then you lick it.

Second you keep licking it until it is all gone. Yummy!

Persuasive Paper

This week we begin to talk about writing papers with opinions.  To introduce the unit we reread a favorite book from Kindergarten called Click Click Moo.  It's the story about how cows found an old typewriter in the barn and typed letters to Farmer Brown demanding that he supply electric blankets for the cold barn.  It's the perfect book to show our students how words can make a difference.

We discussed how we could also write letters, like the cows had done, to change our world!  We discussed how we can get our thoughts onto paper, sometimes ending up with a messy copy, but when we want to really impress people with our opinions and letters, we have to make a really neat copy that is appealing and easy to read.  We showed the students several examples of "fancy" paper, so they could see the kind of paper that writers sometimes use when they want to really impress the reader.  Then we asked each student to design his own special stationary paper.  Each child went right to work designing a special piece.  We told the children, that just like any publisher, the Ruark-Timmons Press would be publishing some of their designs for other students to use.  The students each displayed their sample and the class voted on their favorite designs.  We ended up with about eight different papers.  Of course, a few students didn't think any design was better than their own, so we assured them that they could always design a one of a kind paper when they got ready to write their final draft!  This exercise excited the children and I hope it will inspire them to work hard to get ready to write that final draft.

Get ready because this is a group that is going to rock the world!

Peer Editing

All month we have been writing reports.  Each child has chosen a topic that he knows a lot about and wants to teach the rest of the class.  Today students met with their partner to do some peer editing.  The partners were looking for places where they could add capital letters and punctuation and then finding words from the word wall (also posted on the back of each student's Writing folder) that were misspelled.  They did an amazing job helping each other!

Down 'n' Dirty

New bulletin boards went up today.  We decided to display our combination of Science and Writing.  In Science we have been doing a unit on "What Plants Need to Survive."  As part of our on-going gardening project we are planting potatoes.  I posted earlier about how we planted the potato eyes and then came in and wrote instructions for other classes. 

For our bulletin board border we had our children first draw themselves planting the potatoes on an index card and then had them draw what they thought the potatoes would look like when they were ready to harvest.  The picture to the left is one of my favorites!  I guess we forgot to discuss that the potatoes actually grow as part of the roots under the ground!  The children are going to be quite surprised that they don't see the potatoes growing as leaves and flowers!  Can't wait til harvest time!

We decided to use our potato planting papers for our bulletin board.  It was especially difficult to choose just four pieces of work, because there were so many that we really adored.  Below is Hailey's instructions with her thoughtful and heartfelt opening and closing!  Following that is the teacher commentary.

Hailey’s Commentary

Opening	You have to adore Hailey’s introduction - an original.
Steps	She has several steps in her process and uses the transition words first, next and finally.
Closing	Hailey ties her closing into her introduction by suggesting that some of the potatoes might go to Second Harvest.  She goes on to explain that Second Harvest is a truck that brings food to people who are hungry.  Love how she’s thinking!
Drawings	Hailey’s pictures reinforce each step of her procedure .
Capitals	After an editing conference, Hailey added capitals at the beginning of each sentence.
Punctuation	She also added some of the missing punctuation.
Sight words	Hailey spells most sight words correctly without consulting her word wall.

Potato Planting

Thanks to a wonderful volunteer, Dr. Brenda Zenk, our school garden was prepared for potato planting.  We went to the garden today and gave each pair of children a potato prepared for planting (you can see an example on the left).  Potatoes had been cut to have 2-3 eyes in each piece.  Trenches were dug about twelve inches deep with our class name attached to the row.  In pairs, the children dug a hole with a trowel approximately 8 inches deep and dropped their potato "seed."  The potatoes were planted about 12 inches apart. Then each pair covered the potato piece with about 2 inches of soil and 2 inches of leaves.  The leaves provide nutrients and, like mulch, keep the potatoes from freezing.  It will take about three months for the potatoes to mature so we should be harvesting in April.  Mashed potatoes? Potato chips? French fires?  Can't wait!

When we returned to the room, we reviewed the steps to planting and talked about writing the instructions for other classes that might enjoy planting their own potatoes.  Below is Avery's example of the instructions:

 

Hmmmm... Maybe this is our next bulletin board!

Ants on a Log

Since our theme this year is "Recipe for Success,"  it seemed the perfect time to think about using recipes to introduce procedural writing.  Several years ago, we read Tony Stead's Is That A Fact? and decided to incorporate one of his suggested units for teaching "how to" or procedural writing.  We used cooking projects and then writing about the experience  to teach children to identify ingredients and then the step-by-step procedure for writing a recipe.  That was such a fun unit.  After that year, we continued to do a few cooking projects each year but relied more on Lucy Calkins' Units of Study and folded procedural writing into non-fiction report writing.  We began with having students write a "how to" about something they knew how to do well, such as Karate or making a paper airplane or jumping rope.  Then we moved to including a "how to"  in an "All About" report such as including a "how to hit a ball" in a report "All About Baseball."

This year, however, with our cooking theme, we decided to add that cooking element once again in a more frequent way.  We'll still do our more traditional "how to" unit interwoven in our larger non-fiction writing, but by "cooking" every other Wednesday we'll have a bank of cooking experiences and recipes as the foundation for those beginning "how tos" when we begin our large unit of non-fiction writing in January.

Our first cooking experience was "First Grade Trail Mix."  Today it was "Ants on a Log."  The projects are simple for these first recipes as you can see in the writing below.  We are expecting our students to be able to give the recipe a title, list the ingredients, give the few simple steps and write an opinion to close.  We provide paper specific to this kind of writing.  As the year progresses, the recipes will become a little more complex and the writing will include more detail and description.  But, for today, we enjoyed our healthy snack and our writing lesson!

Translation:

Ants on a Log

Ingredients:

peanut butter

celery

raisins

First you get the celery.  Then you put the peanut butter on the celery.

Next you put raisin on your celery.

Then you eat it.  It was yummy.  I will eat it again.





"How to" Writing

Two kindergarten standard-based bulletin boards feature our writing work this month. "How to" writing is also referred to as procedural writing or part of our non-fiction writing.  One of the kinder classes chose to use class experience with making fun foods as the basis for their writing.  They fixed a food with the class step-by-step and then had the children write about the common experience, using the step-by-step recipe approach.  Mrs. Mallon and Mrs. Dillard's kindergarten class wrote about making popcorn, chocolate pudding, chocolate dipped strawberries and chocolate drizzled pretzels.  Each piece of student work is accompanied by the teachers' commentary.

How to make chocolate pudding

1.First you read the directions.

2.  Then you put the jello in the bowl.

3.Next you put 3 cups of milk.

4.  Finally you wait for 5 minutes.

How to make chocolate drizzled pretzels

1.  First you put the chocolate in the microwave.

2. Next you get the chocolate out of the microwave.

3.  Then you put the chocolate on the pretzels.

4. Finally you put the M&M on the pretzel.

How to make chocolate covered strawberries

1.  First you read the directions.

2.  Then you get chocolate chips.

3.  And pour them in a glass bowl and put them in the microwave

and every 30 seconds to count.

4. And get your strawberries and put the chocolate on.

Eat and enjoy.

How to make popcorn

1.First you turn on the popcorn maker.

2.Next you put two teaspoons of oil.  Then you put the kernels in.

3.Finally you wait for it until it pops.

Now doesn't that sound like a yummy unit!

Solar System Reports

Lest you think our Sleepover is a bunch of fluff and has no academic backbone, you should know that the event ties into our Science unit on Sun, Stars and the Solar System. But it also is the content for our writing unit on Informational Nonfiction Report Writing. Below is Emma's report on the solar system with each planet as its own chapter.
Our Solar System
Mercury
People and animals can not live on Mercury. Mercury is a planet. Mercury is the first planet by the Sun.

Venus

Venus is the 7th planet. Venus is almost the same size as Earth. It has many volcanoes.

Earth

People can live on Earth. Earth is the third planet. Earth has air and water. Earth has one moon.

Mars

Mars has lots of dust. Mars also has caves, rocks, and volcanoes. Mars does not have rings. Mars is the 4th planet.

Jupiter

Jupiter is the 5th planet from the sun. It also has 47 moons. Jupiter is the biggest planet. It is covered with orange clouds.

Saturn

People cannot live on Saturn because it is cold. Saturn has 60 moons. Saturn's surface is not solid.

Neptune

Neptune does not have a solid surface. Neptune is the 8th planet from the sun. You cannot see Neptune without a telescope

Uranus

Uranus is blue. People could not walk on Uranus. It also is the 7th planet from the sun.

Pluto

Pluto is a dwarf planet. Pluto is cold because it is far from the sun. Pluto has 3 moons or more. Pluto is the ninth planet.

Procedural Writing

This week begins our work in procedural writing, writing about "how to" do something. On Monday Tracy had the children write directions for how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. On Tuesday, I read some of the papers as Tracy followed the directions - EXACTLY!
The kids protested loudly, but they had to admit that she was doing exactly what the papers said. When she started spreading the peanut butter and jelly on the bread without taking it out of the wrapper, they really had a fit, but she made her point about how the lack of details can make a big difference. After the demonstration she asked the students to write directions for making peanut butter and jelly again with the details. What a difference!

A Place for Wonder

My first interest in A Place of Wonder was its author, Georgia Heard. I mean, GEORGIA HEARD! Who wouldn't want to read what such a gifted writer and poet had to say?! This book that spans Kindergarten and First Grade, is a non-fiction cross between Debbie Miller's Reading With Meaning , Lucy Calkins' Units of Study for Primary Writing, Kathy Collins' Growing Readers, and Stephanie Parsons' First Grade Writers. Georgia Heard (whose own child was in Jennifer's classroom) and Jennifer McDonough (a looping Kindergarten to First Grade teacher) begin to establish a sense of wonder in Jennifer's Kindergarten classroom as the book opens. Each chapter in the first half of the book gives the teacher a step-by-step process for adding a piece of wonder in those early kindergarten years.

The second chapter of the book delves into teaching children to write non-fiction by building on that sense of wonder. The teachers ask the children to name their three wonders and then teach them to keep their wonderings in wonder boxes. Next they teach children to write books about heart wonders (as opposed to research wonders) such as, Where does magic come from? Why do we have families? Why do I love my dog?

The final section of the book teaches children the nuts and bolts of Nonfiction Research Wonder Writing. Some of the chapters include Trying on Topics, Writing Leads/ Beginnings, Wow Words, Using a Question-answer structure, Diagrams, etc. Although there is not a lot of new information in this book if you have read the four books in the opening paragraph, it's the way that the authors capture wonder and curiosity and teach the children to use it in their writing that is a breath of fresh air. This is an amazing addition to the primary teachers' bag of tricks as they teach non-fiction writing.

"All About" Reports

Suzanne Shall, our Instructional Coach, recently got a comment on her blog - something to the effect that she should stop posting student work that obviously was done by parents! It was a reminder of how low expectations can tie the hands of our children. Given a daily Readers' and Writers' Workshop beginning the first day of kindergarten, quality instruction and the freedom to choose your topics and write your thoughts, there is no limit to what our first graders can do. Below is just such a piece recently completed during our unit on reports. This engaging report has it all - an introduction and closing, great chapters that stay to the topic, nonfiction conventions (such as a Table of Contents, labels, and even "Fun Facts" as captions to many of the illustrations!) The capitalization and punctuation is almost flawless with excellent word choice and so many words spelled correctly. This is an example of what first graders can do! Enjoy!

Procedural Writing

Most of our first grade classrooms have recently completed a study of procedural writing, often called "how to" writing. Some teachers incorporate this genre into their nonfiction writing with reports and others treat it as a separate genre. The following is a good example of the writing we expect this time of year.

"Make a cupcake! For kids!"

Hey! Let your kids help with cupcakes! If you're worried, let them read this and you can help them! This will make them be able to know how to make cupcakes and to stay away from hot ovens! They will love it, making cupcakes with parents! Mixing icing! So fun!First you take flour, sugar, eggs, milk, a candle, a lighter and frosting and a bowl. And don't forget the spoon. Also the cupcake holder. (Notice the labeling in the picture!)

Next you take the ingredients and you take the bowl and spoon and mix it all together!

Next you take the mixture and pour it in the cupcake holder and put them into the oven.

And then you let a parent set the timer. Then you let it bake.

And then you let a parent take the cupcakes out of the oven and put them on the table.

Next with steady hands you squeeze and spread the icing however you want! You could also make designs!

Then you take the candle and put it where you want and let an adult light it!

And last you eat it!


There are lots of things to brag about in this first graders' directions for making cupcakes. You can tell, because of the change in paper, that the child added the introduction that orients the reader. The writer includes the ingredients and supplies that are needed and even remembers to label the ingredients in the first picture. She then writes clear steps for making the cupcakes and accompanies each next step with a clear picture. Transition words such as First, Next, And then, Then, And last are part of each step and she concludes the instructions with a closing statement, "And last, you eat it!" This is a delightful example of what you can expect to see in first grade portfolios this time of year!