Writing, Writing, Writing!

We have been working extremely hard on writing these past few months, and I am finally seeing progress! At first my students would totally miss the point of mini-lessons. I would work on them with prewriting and set them to independent work...and guess what they didn't do? Pre-write! I did a mini-lesson on paragraphing and....they'd write everything in one blob without even indenting. Maybe it was the lectures, maybe it was the parent teacher conferences, maybe it was the report cards, or maybe my little third graders have finally matured. Either way, I am extremely proud of how hard they have been working and the progress I am seeing. They are actually believing in themselves and starting to realize that they can do better! Now it's refining details....like describing things that are important. For example, they finally started describing...but they'd talk about the girl's hair color when it had nothing to do with the problem in the story. Now they're talking about quivering lips, shaking knees, and tear-stained cheeks because of the furrowed eyebrow, teeth-clenching bully!
Other than good old-fashioned practice and using mentor texts as examples, here are some resources I have been using:

Snip! Snap! What's That?

Short, humorous fiction book that is great for teaching onomatopoeia!

I use this cool onomatopoeia art poster to help kids remember different words to use.

Onomatopoeia Poster with Words

Mrs. Gilchrist's Author's Purpose Charts

OREO Persuasive Writing Chart

This is working aaaaamazingly!!! My students are now writing 5 paragraph persuasive essays! It's been hard getting them to come up with reasons, but once they do, the examples flow!

Writing Workshop PowerPoint (click any image to view)

I am now going to give this to parents on Back to School Night!

It includes kid-friendly (but sophisticated) examples of introductions...

descriptions...

...and closings from popular books...

...as well as samples of student writing. They're definitely a little above where I expect my students to be, but it's nice to be able to give them something to aim for.

Check out other resources on my Wonderful Writing Pinterest Board!

...and don't forget to enter my giveaway!