Spring Writing Prompts

The following 6 posts list the spring writing prompt per grade level. Let's help each other support the classroom teachers with their focus on writing by sharing examples of titles (or activities) for the different grade levels and genres. When reference is made to Lucy Calkins, it is referring to a set of books the classroom teachers have that they are using to guide their work on writing. I was told there might even be a set in each library. If not, please don't hesitate to ask to borrow one.

You can either scroll through the posts below, or use the blog archives listing at the right to go directly to a specific grade level.

5th grade - Persuasive

Please comment about books that would be supportive to read-aloud or booktalk for the Spring writing prompt for fifth grade:
Persuasive.

4th grade - Narrative: Strong Feelings

Please comment about books that would be supportive to read-aloud or booktalk for the Spring writing prompt for fourth grade:
Narrative: Strong Feelings. (see Lucy Calkins, book 2 section 3 for ideas)

3rd grade - Nonfiction Summary

Please comment about books that would be supportive to read-aloud or booktalk for the Spring writing prompt for third grade:
Nonfiction Summary.

2nd grade - Personal Narrative

Please comment about books that would be supportive to read-aloud or booktalk for the Spring writing prompt for second grade:
Personal Narrative. (for examples see Launching (3-5) from Lucy Calkins)

1st grade - Narrative

Please comment about books that would be supportive to read-aloud or booktalk for the Spring writing prompt for first grade:
Narrative (possibly reworking a piece already written to take a small incident and expand it into a whole story--for examples, see Lucy Calkins Book 3)

kindergarten-personal narrative

Please comment about books that would be supportive to read-aloud or booktalk for the Spring writing prompt for Kindergarten:
Personal Narrative: Draw a picture of something that happened at recess and write about it (for examples, see Lucy Calkins Small Moments, which every classroom teacher has)

bytesize science

The American Chemical Society (ACS) has created a podcast series called Bytesize Science, aimed at younger students. Now all we've go to do is get them to team up with voicethread so that they can add some images! I've only listened to one podcast, and they did an ok job interjecting some audio sound effects, but staring at a little marker indicating how far along the podcast is is not too captivating. I'll need to listen to some more, to see how they might be incorporated into a classroom setting.... then again, they're only 3ish minutes long, so where is the harm in sharpening science listening skills for 3 minutes a week?

ed.voicethread rocks!

I was intending on just going in and adding the url for the Central Media Library to the last slide of the Jizo Voicethread, below.... but somehow, got sucked further into voicethread and am I glad I did! Phew! There is now an educator version of voicethread called, you guessed it--ed.voicethread ! And it is cool.

Although the following voicethread about blogging with high school science students is too sophisticated for our 4th and 5th grade scili project, it is an excellent example of an instructional tool that seamlessly addresses ethical and copyright issues, too. This voicethread was created by Stacy Baker.


I look forward to developing our voices, students and staff alike!

voice thread trial

Everyone is asleep, so I had to do the recording very quietly. Probably I will have to rerecord tomorrow, not to mention taking out all the "ums", etc. But, let's see if it works! (2/6 update, I did have to rerecord it for more volume. Got rid of some of the ums, too.)

My first voice thread is incorporating a "Book Report In A Box" with 2.0 tools.


Crossing my fingers that it works......

Hey, it did! That is the small version. Let's see what the large version looks like:

Whoa nelly, it totally obliterates everything in its path! Like, it overlapped out past the margins, so nothing on the right side could be seen. I took it out. I'm sticking to the small version.

An even smaller version would be to just embed a link, like this:
http://voicethread.com/share/52402/
or to embed it with the title and link like this: Hats for the Jizos - a voicethread

I think this will be a gift to giving voice (pun intended) to students who might not otherwise get their book reviews published, because they could record a one minute booktalk. Any longer, and it gets a bit boring. Establishing some guidelines like 1 or 2 minutes, and the need to have a couple of objects that represent the book works on higher levels of thinking in terms of interpreting a story and transforming key elements into symbolic representations of that story. Hmmm, I didn't time mine, I'd better go back and do that. Also, an external microphone would work better--I just talked at my macbook, hoping that the built in mic would work, and it did, lucky me.