After rehearsing our stories to ourselves, with a partner and with sketches, we were finally able to let our pencils tell the story today.   We focused on using our story teller’s voice and using feelings, thoughts and details.

Being able to move through the Writing Process (brainstorming, drafting, revising and editing) independently will be our focus for September, using visuals and strategies to keep our Writer’s Workshop moving along.   This allows time for children to practice skills in their own writing and for  me to conference with small groups of children about specific concepts and set goals for their writing.   Look at these cute writers!

We are revisiting small moment (narrative) stories and focusing in on the main event.  We can create a gripping story by adding dialogue, thoughts, feelings, action, and telling it bit by bit (in slow motion) to keep our readers on the edge of their seats!   Today we worked on adding show not tell emotions into our stories.   Our second grade writers really hooked us in!

Our second grade writers are learning from other authors by noticing what they do in their books and then trying it in their own writing.  One first mentor author is Cynthia Rylant.  We are looking at her writing through “writer’s eyes” and thinking about how we can incorporate her style into our writing.  On Friday we realized that we can study and notice what are friends are doing in their writing too.  Many of our writers found great inspirations from our very own classroom writers!   Looking forward to sharing some of their stories with you at conferences.

Our second grade writers have been learning how to REHEARSE their stories before they pick up their pencil to write.  Creating a movie and traveling back in time to see who was there, what people were saying and the strong feeling that they felt help writers connect to their characters and their writing.   Just like athletes and performers,  we need to rehearse and practice so that we can become better writers.  Check out these cute writers rehearsing.

We can travel back in time and create a movie in our minds.

It is helpful to tell our stories to others.

Looking forward to reading the written stories from these rehearsals.