Watermelon or Seed? - Writing Personal Narratives

I love how Lucy Calkins explains choosing a small moment idea when writing personal narratives. If you are unfamiliar with her work, she compares a large event to a watermelon (like a weeklong trip to the beach) and smaller moments to the watermelon's seeds (like building a sandcastle with your sister). I think this is so helpful in making students understand the difference so they can hone in on those seed ideas to use in their writing. As we prepare to begin personal narratives, I've been thinking about how can I really cement this idea for them. I came up with a resource pack for personal narrative writing.

In this pack, I've made posters to help remind them of the difference and give age-appropriate examples of each. I also created a sorting activity to help assess if my students truly understand the difference and a graphic organizer for them to develop their own seed ideas. I think this will really help them gain a good grasp on the concept before I turn them loose to start writing their own small moment stories for our personal narrative study. If you'd like to grab the pack for yourself, you can find it here in my TpT store.

Welcoming a class of writers (and getting that first writing sample)

Earlier this week, as I began to prep for our first day of school this Wednesday, I couldn't help but think about how I should get that first writing sample of the year. 

I pulled out my "back to school" folder and sifted through all my ideas from years past but couldn't commit to anything. Then, I found myself asking, "how do I want to welcome my kiddos to my class this year?" It is my first year ever team teaching and I will be coming in contact with 55 students every day. While this is exciting, its also a big change from my close-knit classroom of 20 last year. I really want to make a personal connection with each and make them feel welcome on our very first day.

 

Then, the idea of a postcard hit me. I am planning to write a welcome post card to my students, telling them a little about me and our class and asking lots of questions. Then, to get that first writing sample, I will have my kiddos write a postcard back. 

The front of mine will be a kind of welcome to 5th grade image, but I'm going to ask them to decorate their own front in a way that describes them. I think it will be cute, possibly even a quick hall display, but also provide me the first piece of writing evidence in their portfolio.

I was feeling a little ambitious after creating the post cards for my class, so I made a front image for all grades 1-5. If you'd like to do this activity with your own littles, you can find this pack in my TpT store.

How do you plan to sample and assess writing at the start of the school year?