Am I Done Yet? Teaching Children to Finish A Piece of Writing

I taught a little girl named Arleigh. Her mom Amanda is a teacher, a friend of mine. Amanda shared this precious story with me...
One day, after school Arleigh said, "Mom, it was the best day ever in kindergarten!" Wondering what we had done that day, Amanda ask, "What did you do today that was so great?"  Arleigh said, "Mom did you know that good writers are never done? Do you know what that means? That means that I get to write all of those stories in my heart...all of them! Isn't that great?!" (Arleigh is now in high school and works with the school publication!) We want to build that sense of excitement in all of our writers.

How do we do that. Well, here's what we know:

• Writer's pick their own topic.
• Writer's build stamia.
• Children work at different rates, some taking longer to finish a piece.
• Some children start many pieces, but rarely finish any.

Here's what we can do.

• Teach children to ask themselves three questions, "Do I need to add to the picture?, Do I need to add to the words?, and Do I need to start a new piece?"
• Tackle each question in a mini lesson, meaning that it will take 3 days to cover all of the questions.

For the mini lesson, we will follow the same format as other lessons:
Link: Say, "Remember yesterday when we..." and remind the children what you taught them yesterday.
Teach: Say, "Today, I am going to show you how good writers ask themselves questions when they think they are done with a piece of writing. One question they might ask themselves is, "Do I need to add to the pictures?"
Using a writing that you finished in a previous mini lesson, model adding to your picture.  It is important that children understand WHY you are adding to your picture...we want to help our readers. We add to our picture so that the reader will know more about our piece of writing. We want to make it clear for our reader.

Active Engagement: "Now let me see you try." Invite the children to select a piece of writing from their folder and bring it to the carpet when they come. This way, they will be ready for the lesson! While still on the rug, the children add to the picture in their piece of writing. They will use this same piece of writing tomorrow to add to the words.
Link: "So remember boys and girls, today and everyday, good writers ask themselves questions when they think they are done with their writing. One question they might ask themselves is, "Do I need to add to the picture?"

Once we send them off to write independently some children will apply this lesson and others may not.  The mini lesson is based on the scope and sequence. This means that the mini lesson will be something that some children are already doing naturally, others will apply what they learned easily to their own writing, and yet others will not be quite ready.

While the kids are working independently, you can conference with children. At this time you will be able to determine where the children are in their ability to apply this lesson.
Does conferencing with kids stress you out? Are you never sure what to say? Next week, I will share a post on conducting a conference and give you a little cheat sheet to make it easy, peasy! Until then...happy writing.
The Am I Done Yet? anchor chart is from this unit.

Or in this bundle