Weekly Writing

As students grow as writers, one important element is choice. Students will have ample choice in our writing workshop. Part of the work writers do in their notebook is generating or collecting ideas for future drafts. As writers gather and collect ideas in their language arts notebook, they may use those ideas to compose three one page writing entries.  Writing entries can be completed in the notebook, through google docs, or a blog. Our goal is to engage students in digital writing as part of their experience as a writer. Weekly, students need to write outside of class. Typically on Mondays, we will monitor weekly writing which is worth 10 points.  All entries must have a title and date.

For many of the writing entries, writers have choice about their topic. For writers who are struggling, we encourage them to use the following to help generate a topic:  heart map, scar map, neighborhood map, expert list, bank of experiences (8th grade) and other entries from their notebook.