Peek At My Week-Week 12: Apples and Pumpkins and a little bit about Interactive Writing

Have you ever tried Interactive Writing? If so, you might have said, "never again!" You might have felt like it was a complete train wreck.  If you have had any of those feelings, you are not alone.  So why subject ourselves to the torture? Interactive writing is a fabulous tool to teach many reading and writing concepts. It is used easily to connect reading and writing with science and social studies. AND, it doesn't have to be painful.  After a look at our week, I will talk a little about interactive writing and how to make it work in every classroom. So....keep reading.
This is a week of getting ready to celebrate! Friday we will finish both Unit 3 in Reader’s Workshop and Small Moments in the I Can Write Unit.
We are loving our new non-fiction books we started last week.

Did you know you can download a copy of these plans with links to the different resources? You can get those here.

I have received many requests to bundle the Guided Reading Units. As of now, only October and November are available. *UPDATE--The units are now available for every month!

So I thought I would share a little bit about interactive writing….Here is the flow map that we made last year.

Here are a few tips on interactive writing:

• Interactive writing is when the teacher and the children share ideas and the pen.
• The teacher can decide how much she wants to share the pen by inviting children to write only certain parts of the word and then she finishes the rest of the word.
• Decide what standard you are going to teach. Now, invite the children to help you with that part and you do the other parts.
• While one child is coming to write on the chart, the other children should also be writing on a dry erase board, a piece of paper, or something else. This ensure active engagement of everyone!
• Using sentence strips works great. You can attach them low enough on the easel for the children to easily reach.

So, we have finished the interactive writing, now what?

• On ANOTHER day, we took the sentences. read them and arranged them in the correct order.
• Then, we cut between the words.
• We mixed up the words and then put them back in the correct order, asking ourselves, “Does it make sense?”

After getting them in the correct order, we took turns reading the text.

So how do you differentiate with interactive writing?

I found this information in an old resource by my friend Kim Jordano.  When, I read each of the three stages: emergent, developing, and advanced, I kinda had a “ahhh” moment.
For example, if I am working on punctuation:

• I can invite my emergent writers to add periods.
• I can invite my developing writers to add commas and quotation marks.
• I can invite my advanced writers to add apostrophes.

This allows for us to all participate in the same experience, but yet each child “plugs in” at a level that is just right…not too hard, not too easy!


Be sure and hop over to Deedee’s blog to see what other bloggers are doing this week….