Building a Community of Writers

As Kindergarteners, students began the year launching the writing workshop with a Building a Community of Writers unit of study. As first graders, the students will continue this journey.   They have had experiences with structures and expectations of the writing workshop, received their "handy dandy" writing folder to hold their pieces, and charted what writing workshop looks like and sounds like. We start within the first few days of school re-acquainting children with structures, routines and habits that promote a collaborative writing community. The heart of this unit lives in establishing trust amongst the community members; trust that will foster open, collaborative relationships amongst community members that expands throughout the school year. In first grade students will continue to develop their writing process by expanding their topic ideas, developing more to say about each idea, and become more fluent with the writing process.

The focus of this unit is to help students develop writing habits and processes they can apply throughout their writing lives.  Due to this, the genre selection is open-ended for students to explore the writing process and engage in a new writing community.

In addition to having fun writing their first pieces of first grade, students are beginning to share and enjoy hearing each other's work.

We are also working on a handwriting page each day.