The students wrote about their “best parts,” and produced unique, descriptive pieces of writing.  

Division 2: I loved your writing.  Some thoughts on your finished products:

  • Paragraphs are important.  They guide your reader to understand your ideas.
  • Little details and description add a lot!  They help us, your audience, to connect to your ideas and to visualize (with all our senses) what you are describing.  
  • I will never write on your good copies.  I feel like that would be the same as writing on your artwork.  However, if you end up with little mistakes in your good copy, let’s think about how to improve our process for revising and editing so that you can reduce them this year.  Buddy proofreading can be helpful.
  • The thesaurus can sometimes be a friend!  I love that you are expanding your vocabularies.  However, overusing a thesaurus can result in the loss of your “voice”; your writing might end up sounding not like you.  Your voice is so important!
  • This one is from my favourite teacher of reading and writing, Adrienne Gear (she wrote the Reading Power/ Writing Power books).  She is talking about the writing process, and how writers look at having conferences in order to revise their work:   

“Make it shine!” What a great thought to share with middle-grade students as they begin writer’s workshop this year.

“If a teacher told me to revise, I thought that meant my writing was a broken-down car that needed to go to the repair shop. I felt insulted. I didn’t realize the teacher was saying, “Make it shine. It’s worth it.” Now I see revision as a beautiful word of hope. It’s a new vision of something. It means you don’t have to be perfect the first time. What a relief!” – Naomi Shihab Nye

Happy Thanksgiving, Division 2!