Writing Journals

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week I’ve been working one on one with students during Daily 5; rather than observing at the Guided Reading table. I float around the room and meet with students who are writing in their journals, reading to themselves, or doing word work activities. 

So far, my favorite part of this opportunity is all of the “mini teaching” moments I get to have with students. I sit down next to a student who is writing in their journal and ask them what they are working on or if they would like to share a sentence they have written with me. We read through the sentence together and find one or two ways to beef up the sentence. For example, focusing on having all lowercase letters in the sentence (versus random words that are capitalized but are not suppose to be). The best part, is when the student catches their mistake(s) while reading the sentence without me even having to say a word! Some of the things we focus on are starting every sentence with a capital letter, ending with punctuation, using finger spaces, and writing in lower case letters through out the sentence (unless words are suppose to be capitalized).  

The feeling you get from seeing a student gleam from ear to ear as they show you a page in their journal that they could not be more proud just can’t be explained. The picture below is of one students journal page. He was able to share this page with his classmates. Talk about a proud moment! I loved seeing how much thought went into this sentence. He used describing words, punctuation, and several star words! 

(He starts the sentence below the picture then moves to continue his writing on the top of the page)

Friday is the 100th day of school! The students are just a little bit excited :)