We Like to Edit? We Like to Edit. We Like to Edit!

In Writer's Workshop we have been discussing paragraphs. Last week, students pre-wrote and drafted a three-paragraph assignment in response to a camping or birthday party prompt I had given them. Students indented each time an action changed.

Earlier this week, we reviewed what we do during the revising stage, and students went to their drafts and used their red pen to add, subtract, and rearrange words to make their writing more powerful. Today we focused on editing. I wrote up a sample draft and put in my own red revisions. We discussed our editing rules that we use a blue pen to put the finishing capitalization, punctuation, and spelling fixes on our writing. They helped me find a lot of errors!

 Rather than giving students their own writing assignment to edit, I decided to give each student a piece of writing written by a different fourth grader. Had I known the excitement for editing this would generate, I would have done it a lot sooner! It seems as though kids are a lot more eager to find errors in other students' writing than in their own. :) (Imagine that!) Students referred to the conventions chart on their orange writing binders to help them remember all of our fourth-grade punctuation and capitalization rules.

 Granted, editing is one of the things students do during their peer conferences with one another, but for some reason, this editing activity really resonated with my kids. When they got to a part of their draft that they didn't understand, they went to the author and had purposeful discussion about the writing. It was awesome! Kids were working together to improve each other's writing. Many of them asked, "Are there any more papers we can edit?" (*Insert choir of angels here...*)

 It just so happened that there WAS editing to do during Social Studies today, too. After students read and wrote their paragraphs about the economy of the West, students exchanged their paragraphs and edited one another yet again. I couldn't believe my eyes...

We had a wonderful first night of conferences tonight! 

I look forward to meeting with the rest of you on Monday.

Homework:

1. Reading - 15 mins.

2. Math - Facts, 16.2

3. Spelling - Test Friday

4. Science - Finish electromagnet investigation sheet

5. Social Studies - States/Cities Map Test

6. Sleep Diary

7. Thursday envelope

Types of Print & That Darn Letter S!

*Attention Parents: Here is a link to the Land and Climate Poster Project students should be working on this weekend. It is due on Wed., Oct. 19!*

 --------------------------------------------------

Today we officially kicked off our study of informational and everyday text. We defined the characteristics and looked at examples of informational and everyday text.

Students glued this chart into the Genre Learning tab of their Thoughtful Logs.

 Students looked for different types of print as they read independently today (regardless of whether they had fiction or non-fiction) and tallied the number of times they saw a different type of print.

 During our share time, we discussed our observations and began brainstorming WHY authors might use a different type of print. Today specifically we discussed that an author might use italics to indicate a title or a journal entry by a character in a book. Another student found that words in all capital letters were used for both shouting and for headers.

On a different note, I've been noticing that many of our kiddos are putting apostrophes before every s at the end of their words. It was clear to me that my students didn't understand the difference between using an s for possession versus using an s to make something plural. I used a page from Amelia's Notebook (which we have been reading as a mentor text for the trait of ideas lately) and highlighted the words with an s on the end. I asked students what they noticed about all the words that were highlighted. Students discovered that they all ended in s, but those in yellow had apostrophes before the s and those in green did not.

I used this SMARTboard slide to discuss the difference. I had printed this slide out ahead of time and students glued it in the Author's Craft section of their Thoughtful Logs since good authors always make sure to use punctuation appropriately. The chart will serve as a resource if students need to refer to it during Writer's Workshop.

We practiced a few examples together, and then I had students write down two sentences that I had dictated.

Homework:
1. Reading: 15 mins., Pizza Log (Look for different types of print in your books!)
2. Math: Facts - 10 mins., 7.1/7.2
3. Social Studies: Poster due Wed.