Spelling Stories - Creativity Unleashed!

Have you ever asked your students to write a story with their spelling words? It may not seem like the most original assignment, but the resulting stories are always tremendously creative!

This assignment may not sound exciting, but it's an extremely effective way of assessing how well your students understand their spelling words... and the stories are fun to read! If you don't believe me, just read the spelling story below that was written by Derrick, one of my former students!

Here are some practical tips to help you unleash your students' creative talents with spelling stories.

Tips for Assigning Spelling Stories
For several weeks before you ask your students to write stories with their spelling words, have them write spelling sentences. For that assignment, I allowed them to choose 10 of their spelling words and to write a complete sentence that showed the meaning of each word. It was only after they mastered that assignment that moved on to spelling story assignments. Here are the basic directions I gave my students; feel free to modify them according to your students's needs. I allowed them to change the form of the word slightly, such as making it plural, changing the verb tense, and so on.

Use at least 10 of your spelling words in a short creative story. The story can be silly, but it must make sense and must be more than a collection of unrelated sentences. Underline all spelling words used in the story. You may use other forms your spelling words, but be sure to spell them and use them correctly.    

Creativity Unleashed
Most spelling lists include unrelated words, so students must be very creative in order to include at least 10 of them. I don't mind if the stories are short as long as they meet the requirements. Sometimes the funniest and most creative stories are the shortest ones! I'll bet you have at least one student who likes to take shortcuts on assignments. If your students are like mine, they will write the most hilarious stories just to get the assignment done with the fewest words possible! Click the story on the right to read Derrick's story, a perfect example of creativity unleashed! He used 14 words in a story that wasn't even a full page long.

Tips for Grading Spelling Stories
Spelling stories can be tricky to grade, but if you're going to grade them, it's important for your students to understand your grading policy. Rubrics are perfect for grading these types of assignments because they keep you from being too subjective. You can download and use my Spelling Story Rubric from the Spelling page on Teaching Resources if you like it, or modify it if needed.
Each of the 5 criteria on the rubric can receive up to 5 points. After you assign the points and total them, you can use the scale at the bottom to convert that total to a letter grade. I suggest sharing the rubric with your students and their parents before they write their very first story. You might even want to write a sample story that contains errors and show your students how that story would be graded. Then display Derrick's story example shown above and have your students help you score it with the rubric.

Tips for Sharing Stories
At some point during the writing process, be sure to provide an opportunity for students to share their stories with their classmates. If you have a class blog or website, post the stories online for everyone to read there. Morning meetings and author sharing times are great opportunities for sharing, too. Our favorite time to listen to spelling stories was Friday afternoon when everyone was packed up and we were waiting for the final bell to ring. I would call on volunteers, one at a time, to sit on my teacher stool and share their spelling stories. It was a fun way to wrap up the week and always left us laughing as we walked out the door!

4 Square Planning: The Key to Organized Writing

Guest post by Catherine Reed, the Brown Bag Teacher

As a fifth-grade ELA teacher, I spent many hours writing together with my students. We worked on developing ideas, learning writing conventions, giving opinions, and most importantly, organizing our thoughts.

My students were expected to learn three differentiated classes of writing, and my lowest writers really struggled with the execution of ideas.

My students knew what they wanted to say but struggled to write it in a logical, organized manner that allowed others to understand. Throughout our first 9 weeks together, I tried planner after planner including a pyramid planner, a traditional main idea planner, genre-specific planners, etc., and found that these planners did not work for my students.

I was blessed to visit a neighboring school which has shown tremendous growth in their on-demand writing scores and I asked questions. My first question - How do you teach students to plan? The answer - Schoolwide (K-5) we use a 4-Square Planner. So, back to 5th grade I went and introduced the 4-square planner, this time, very successfully.

While my gut feeling was to provide my students with a printed planner that they would 'fill in', I fought it. My 5th graders (even my lowest writers) needed ownership in the process and were very capable of creating the planner themselves. Additionally, on state testing, my students definitely wouldn't be given a pre-printed planner; we needed to practice like we play. The format went like these - a horizontal and vertical line down the middle, a small box in the center of the paper. Below is a typed version of the planner. If you would like like it for your reference, you may grab it below from DropBox.

Below is an example of a template planner for Opinion Writing. The great part of the 4-square planner is that it's not mode-specific. We used this planner for opinion writing, narrative writing, and inform/explain writing. We could meet and teach all components of the Common Core Writing Standards through this one planner.

Some students choose to write a very detailed plan, methodically recording their ideas on the planner and then, on their formal writing piece. While others include a main idea for each paragraph (required by me) and then, a main word/idea for each supporting detail. When students wrote an entire piece, I wanted to see the following things on their planner: a full thesis, 3 main ideas, and at least 2 supporting details/words in each box/paragraph.

Using the 4-square planner, I found many students preferred to fill in the 4th box (the conclusion) only after they had written the bulk of their piece. once their piece has substance, they would then return to the planner to play around with their ideas and anchor their ideas.

Ultimately, we give a planner format to help guide their work and organize their thoughts, but as they grow as writers, students must learn what works best for them (How do I best organize my thoughts? How thoroughly do I need to plan? How long does it take for me to plan vs. write?). After much practice and modeling, students then have ownership over their writing process and know what parts of the planner work for them. It's at this point that we as teachers have to give up control and trust our students.

Catherine Reed is a former-fifth grade ELA teacher in central Kentucky and is now visiting first grade for her second year of teaching. Catherine blogs at The Brown Bag Teacher where she shares ideas for creating learning experiences and integrating technology in the everyday classroom!

Using Weekly Letter Writing In the Classroom

Guest blog post by Mary from Teaching With a Mountain View.

I vividly remember my first day student teaching... not the details of what I was teaching or the clothes I was wearing, but the way my cooperating teacher captivated her students. She handed them their first homework assignment— writing a letter in response to a letter she had written to them—and explained that it would be a weekly assignment. They groaned, but she didn’t miss a beat. “You’re going to grow to love this!” she told them. They trusted her, and she couldn’t have been more right.

Since that year, I have always written weekly letters to my students and required that they respond to me. It has become a part of our weekly homework routine, and it is the one thing I most look forward to grading every single week. It builds community among the class, my students (and their parents) get to know me, I get to know my students, it is an excellent way to review material from the week or let students get creative, and kids learn to love writing in a totally nonthreatening environment. 

How It Works 

Every Sunday evening, I curl up on the couch with my laptop and write a letter to my students. I do a quick recap of anything entertaining from my weekend (kids love to know you’re human, too!), and I may ask them to share something about their life with me. Then, I give them a prompt or two that they must answer in a letter back to me. 

For example, if we focused on a specific character trait the previous week, I would ask them to give me examples of how they embodied that trait this week. When we were studying regions of the United States, part of their letter back to me would require them to tell me where in the world they would go if they could go anywhere. 

Typically, I would give them each a copy of the letter on Monday morning, and they would turn in their responses (in letter format) by Thursday. At the beginning of the year, we spent time reviewing the format and conventions of a letter.

You Can Do It!

I know what you are thinking: This sounds like a huge amount of work. I promise, it’s not! It took me less than 10 minutes each week to write my letter. You could even assign a monthly letter if weekly sounds overwhelming, or if you have younger students.

When my teammates got on board with letter writing, we would take turns writing the assignment part of the letter and just add our own introduction. I would also jot down topics all week so that it wouldn’t take me long to write my letter when it came time. I tried to include different types of writing (persuasive, informative, descriptive, narrative) throughout the year. My two all-time favorite prompts were the one where students had to argue for or against a weekend of shopping and the one where they had to come up with 5 pieces of advice that started with “Never” and 5 pieces of advice that started with “Always.”

Here are some topic starters or themes to get you thinking:

• Current Events, Sports, Holidays

• Funny or Bizarre Holidays and Dates

• Current Classroom Topics of Study

• Follow Up or Reflecting on Read Alouds or other Books

• Reading Responses 

• Weekend Recaps

Believe it or not, students look forward to receiving their new letter every Monday. They equally look forward to the (very brief) notes I jot on their return letters. In addition to writing short notes (Wow! Awesome! Did you really do that? I totally agree!) on their letters, I used a half-page grading rubric to hold them accountable for their writing. 

Letter-Writing Freebie
You can download the free grading rubric, example letters, an information sheet, and monthly topic ideas at my Teachers Pay Teacher store! 

Letter writing is a wonderful way to keep even the most reluctant writers writing and to hone those writing skills all year long! 

Mary teaches grades 3-5 in beautiful Colorado and has a passion for creating differentiated and engaging assignments. She creates teacher resources and blogs at Teaching With a Mountain View.

Classroom Book Publishing Webinar

Your students can become published authors, and it won't cost you a penny! Studentreasures Publishing has a free program where your class can create a hardcover book with up to 66 pages - 33 stories and 33 color illustrations. You can choose from several book formats that include portrait or landscape pages and lined or unlined paper for the story pages.

I loved using this program in my class, so I'm excited to be able to present a webinar next week about the project called Simple Steps to Classroom Book Publishing. The webinar will take place on March 6th at 8 p.m. EST, but if you miss it, you can watch the recording from the Studentreasures page I've set up on my website. I'm a visual person, so I created the Classbook Storyboard shown below to help teachers plan and organize their projects. I'll be explaining how to use the Storyboard during the webinar. You can download a copy now by clicking on the image.

One reason that I'm so excited about the webinar is that I'll be joined by three other teachers who are just as passionate as I am about the project as I am:

• Juana Saborido, 6th grade
• Candy Carl, 1st grade
• Robin Kramer, 1st grade

The book shown above, An Imaginary World, was created by Juana Saborido's 6th grade class. Juana, Candy, Robin, and I will be available at the end of the session to answer your questions about the Classbook publishing project. The webinar is being hosted by Studentreasures, so a few members of their staff will available to answer questions, too.

You can register for the webinar by clicking on the image on the left to be taken to the Simple Steps to Classroom Book Publishing registration page. You can sign up even if you can't attend the live session and you'll be sent the recording link later.

I know this is a busy time of year, but I hope you'll take time to attend this webinar. Publishing student work for free is an opportunity you don't want to pass up, but the project can be a little tricky the first time you do it. Yes, you can watch the recording later, but you won't be able to have YOUR questions personally answered! Also, at the end of the webinar, 3 participants will be randomly selected to win a $50 gift card to Scholastic, and you do have to be present to win. Please use the social sharing buttons on this blog post to share it with anyone you know who might be interested. I hope you'll join us on Tuesday, March 6th!