Writing celebration
The children have learned so much this year in writing. These pictures show tremendous growth. The students are now authors!
As a part of our writing I made a class graphic, a sunflower to help the children to visualize their growth over the school year in writing. All the children started out as seeds in the ground. Here is a close up of the seeds in the ground.
Here is what the whole sunflower looked like. I only had 4 flower petals on the flower with basic details the children needed to include in their writing to not overwhelm them.
For the first quarter writing sample the children started growing as leaves, they were beginning writers. The children were really sprouting as authors.
The flower pretty much looked like this for most of the year. However the students were learning so much about writing. I made another chart- which the general education teachers really liked and will use next year with many of the nuances of writing the children needed to include. During the 2nd and 3rd quarter I used this chart to conference with the students, I told them 1-2 things they were doing well and then I wrote their name by 1 area we decided that they could get better on. By 4th quarter, we were working on 2 areas they could be working on.
As we wrote in class, both the students and I could refer to our Writing Goals to see what we were doing well and what we still needed to work on. I liked having a chart where I could have all 31 students names on, even though I only had 9- 12 children at a time. It was also a good reference for me to refer back to see what I needed to reteach or review.
By the end of the year writing prompt I was very excited to see what my students write, here is the end of year picture.
The children were so proud of their work. I met with each student and I showed them their beginning of the year assessment and their end of the year assessment. The smiles and look of accomplishment were priceless. Many looked at their beginning of the year story and retold me about it, but they could see how much they had grown.
Here is their before and pictures in a video.
I also made a video of each student reading their end of the year story. They are divided into 3 groups since it would be too long to have them all together.