Daily 5 Book Study - Chapter 6 and a Freebie

Hey, friends...we are almost at the end of our Daily 5 book study...this week we are onto Chapter 6: Work on Writing and Word Work. A huge thanks to Deb from Fabulously First for hosting :)

Work on Writing

What I had my students use last year was a folder to keep their writing in during Work on Writing. (For Writer's Workshop, they used a draft book.) We started out with this basic format of paper:

get paper from C&C Teach First here

As my students built up their stamina, I would add different styles of writing paper to keep it fun...and to keep them interested...because we did Writer's Workshop almost every.single.day. By the end of the year, most of my kiddos were filling up two pages of paper that looked like this:

also from C&C Teach First

My only source of conflict (such a harsh word) is that as another bribe incentive for choosing Work on Writing, I allowed my students to use colored pencils and crayons...which was a big no-no during Writing Workshop...please don't throw virtual things at me...But now, after reading In Pictures and In Words by Katie Wood Ray, I am now in a quandary...she emphasizes that illustration work is just as important as the writing and therefore colored pencils, crayons, and markers should be allowed during the writing process????

What do you do in your classroom? Am I way over-thinking this? You know how it is...some kiddos can get sooo caught up in "coloring" their pictures...please share how you handle this in Writer's Workshop/ Work on Writing...

Word Work (Work on Words)

One of the activities my kiddos l-o-v-e-d was using dry-erase boards during Word Work. My only rule for using the dry-erase boards (I know I have so many rules), is that they had to be able to read the words they wrote down. It wasn't meaningful if they were only writing down letters without any meaning attached to them.

Then they progressed to writing sentences using words they found around the room...then adding correct capitalization and punctuation. It was so much easier for them to "see" the "end" of their sentence versus putting a period at the end of every line...you know what I'm talking about :)

They also had cardboard and magnetic letters to manipulate and spell words, but the dry-erase boards were the biggest hit. I have discovered so many fabulous resources on Pinterest this summer for Word Work that I can't wait to use with my kiddos! Here are a couple of my favs because I'm all about recycling and easy:

from Pink and Green Mama

from The Activity Mom

And now onto the freebie...I created these as covers for my students' Work on Writing folders. These could also be used for Work on Words folders (W.O.W folders). 

get yours here

 
The black and red matches my pirate theme, but they are also available in black and white so you can have your students color these in or they could be printed on colored paper to match your theme.


Frames by Tales from Outside the Classroom and font by Kevin and Amanda.

I would love to hear how you plan to use them in your classroom :)

What successes/ challenges have you had with implementing Work on Writing or Word Work?