I've never considered myself a writer. You might be asking yourself....WHAT??? You're an ELA teacher??? I think of myself as a Reading teacher. When I taught Middle School, Reading & English were 2 separate teachers and classes. All I focused on for 9 years was reading skills. When I started teaching 5th grade, all of a sudden, I needed to teach Language. It has been my biggest challenge (besides the one year I HAD to teach math!)
Soooo.....to help my challenge, I attended a workshop "Persuasive & Analytical Writing". It was very interesting and the presenters were veteran intermediate English teachers. The attendees were an equal mix of Elem, Inter, and High School teachers. Lucky for me, at my table, were mostly Elem teachers with 3 us teaching 5th grade. We found ourselves sharing ideas about how we would adapt this challenging subject to our kids. Sometimes it was WAY over my head and I am glad I don't teach High School Seniors!
As the school year progresses, I will share some of the ideas I gleaned. I did learn that it is important for us to build a foundation for our upper grades and we can model these difficult concepts. In our district, we have a Persuasive Writing benchmark at the end of 5th grade and it is graded on the rubric of the 7th grade STAAR Writing. Soooo...a goal for me this year is to plan more writing activities with this in mind.
Here's my share for today:
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Amazon description:
"What would you do if the ant you were about to step on looked up and started talking? Would you stop and listen? What if your friends saw you hesitate? That’s what happens in this funny, thought-provoking book. Originally a song by a father-daughter team, this conversation between two creatures, large and small, is bound to inspire important discussions. It might even answer that classic childhood question: To squish or not to squish?"
One of the 5th grade teachers at the table said this was a wonderful mentor text to model persuasive writing. She said she drew the body of an ant and the children help write their arguments in the 3 parts of the body. CUTE!! It is now in my Amazon cart along with this one she also uses.
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