Primarily Speaking: All About Me...Success!

What. A. Week.? Four day weeks are both a blessing and a curse.? You know what I'm talking about, you get a day off to relax but then you only have 4 days to plan/prep for the following week.? Needless to say, my 31 bag is full of things to cut and glue before Monday rolls around.

This week we worked on our All About Me unit.? It's a mini writing unit that I designed to ease writers back into the writing process.

Writing can be challenging and most students don't do a whole lot of it over the summer.? So, to help my students feel confident and successful upon returning to school, I created three organizers (two are shown) and two fill in the blank writing topics to ease them into narrative writing.

This is one of the organizers that we completed.? I had them write more facts about themselves on the back.? Surprisingly, many of the kids did not know where they were born.? Don't parents tell their kids this kind of stuff?

I love this organizer.? Not only are they brainstorming, but they are also classifying information. By the way, I wish my handwriting was this nice.

?This is the "When I Grow Up" fill in the blank writing page.? They did really well completing their pages.? I love that this girl wants to make a lot of money...I do too.

This is the other fill in the blank writing page (first and third grade versions are also included in the unit).? We used this as a rough draft and the next day the students copied the entire paragraph onto a new piece of paper (no prompts) so that we could hang it on our hallway bulletin board.? This boy wants to be a nerd...love it!

Once the students completed these pages (over the course of several days), they were tasked with writing a "group" of sentences about themselves.? I'm not using the term "paragraph" just yet.

Before I had the kids begin their writing, I modeled how to do this by writing my own group of sentences.? I wrote a paragraph about myself and pointed out the use of topic sentence, some details, and a concluding sentence.? I didn't necessarily focus on these terms, but I did use them.? I mostly explained each part and its purpose and then quizzed the kids before I let them loose.
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The students did great with this writing assignment.? They all had a topic sentence and details.? Most had a concluding sentence, but a few did not.? That is usually a toughie for second graders and I'm not holding it against them at this point.? I think the subject matter also helped too.? They know a lot about themselves and they had spent several days classifying and brainstorming information that would be helpful.

There is also an art component to this unit.? I had the students paint a watercolor portrait.? I have had my students do this every year because they turn out great and I love looking at them every day!? I hang them below my whiteboard and the kids take them home at the end of the year.

?This year, as I was hanging them up, I literally stopped in my tracks when I got to this painting.? It is amazing! And, being a life long freckle girl myself (had them ever since I was a tot), I am in love with her red freckles. ?
I was pretty excited when I created this unit, and now that I have used it with my class, I am excited to use it again next year.? In fact, I already have some ideas for changing it up a bit.? Some users have reported that they used the materials to create individual student books.? What a great idea!? I actually used mine in pieces, but definitely will assemble it as a whole book next year.? This is why feedback is so great!!

Check back this week as I plan to share some part/part/whole activities we used in class.

Source: http://primarily-speaking.blogspot.com/2012/09/all-about-mesuccess.html

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