Vocabulary Workshop Level A Unit 8 Completing The Sentence

[Alfie Overacre]

Getyour students excited about informational writing! This complete informational writing unit includes daily lesson plans, notebook charts, mentor texts and more. This unit takes your students through the whole writing process. Students will begin with getting ideas and end with a published piece of informational writing. The informational writing lessons included can be used in two ways:

"My school adopted a curriculum which was just had guidelines as to what should be taught but was lacking resources. I purchased this writing unit and was so pleased with how comprehensive the lessons and graphic organizers are! I will definitely purchase the other units! Thank you!" - Jessica M.

You probably already know that conferring and working in small groups is the most organic and effective way to differentiate your instruction AND meet your students' needs. However, that requires YOU to be working with them. What about when you're not working with them? You want meaningful, rigorous writing opportunities that are skill-specific. That is precisely the purpose of these writing centers.

There are 5 Types of Writing Centers with 5 of each writing center. That means you've got 25 Writing Centers to help your students grow! Each writing center also includes an Answer Key so that students can self-check or you can use as a grade if you prefer. The centers are available as color-coded or black and white. This particular set of Writing Centers are based on Scientific concepts.

1. Fix it Up! Editing - Students edit a paragraph. The number of mistakes is located at the bottom so students know when they have found them all OR if they need to keep looking. An answer key is included so students can self-check.

3. Elaboration Station - Students are given a few sentences with facts about the topic. After the facts/evidences, students use elaboration strategies to add on to the paragraph. Sample responses are included.

5. Sort + Write - This center includes 5 different science-based sorting activities. Students have directions for each sort. They are given words and phrases to sort for a specific purpose. After they have sorted, they write a multi-paragraph essay using the details and the sort to organize and write their essay. There are a total of 5 sorts. These could also double duty as a science center.

? Are you a member of the TLL Membership? These materials are already included. If you are not a member, click here to learn more. The TLL Membership gives you an all-access pass to hundreds of ELA resources for teachers in Grades 3-5.

In my 3rd Grade classroom, I used multiple copies of the same book or books and paired students in partnerships. In my school, we have a 30 minute Reading Intervention Block. I began this project with students who were not pulled out or working with me in small groups during this time. This was a nice way for students to work independently or in partnerships. It also created an extension for what they could already do as readers. Plus, they had so much fun! I let them work on this project in their partnerships. This held several benefits. Many students who were not pulled out or working in small groups tend to be higher level students OR students who have untapped potential. Allowing them to work on a project like this can extend their learning, as well as find new ways to enjoy reading. While other students had special groups or went to see other teachers, it was nice for these students to have their own project too.

The Poster Page is a template that you could use for students to turn in with the essay or you could use this as a planning page and then have students create a larger poster on their own. I assigned it as homework and was pleasantly surprised at what my students turned in. I saw a wonderful increase in engagement by students who had shown little motivation or enthusiasm for reading. You can see the photos in the preview or in the product itself. Please know I updated the pages after the photos were taken with more detail and provided the poster template. Good luck to you with this project! If you have any questions, please contact me!

? Are you a member of the TLL Membership? These materials are already included. If you are not a member, click here to learn more. The TLL Membership gives you an all-access pass to hundreds of ELA resources for teachers in Grades 3-5.

This unit is 50% off through Thursday, July 14th!

This unit is a foundational unit to build craft, community, and confidence in your writing workshop. This is a 10 day unit that focuses on moving through the writing process and having students complete one narrative piece. The narrative unit will go deeper into crafting a personal narrative.

Note from Dave: Ever since I started using Doug Stark's approach to grammar and mechanics instruction, I've been encouraging him to share it with the wider world. I first became a believer when I saw the results: when I taught kids after they'd had Doug, there was a noticeable difference in their mastery of the English language.

To me, these warm-ups are the epitome of being as clear and impactful and purposefully repetitive [1] as we can be. Why would we teach grammar and mechanics this way? Because each of our secondary students deserves a shot at mastering the most fundamental conventions of the English language, and because the world will not graciously look past distractingly erroneous prose.

With that said, I am so proud to introduce Doug's newly remastered warm-ups series, Mechanics Instruction that Sticks: Using Simple Warm-Ups to Improve Student Writing, which includes four levels of full year's worth of warm-ups (13 units per level) as well as quizzes for each unit and three supplemental activities). MITS is the first digital product I've published that wasn't my own, and I could not be prouder. I am so grateful and excited to introduce to you, Doug Stark.

Because I had put up posters with models of different sentence structures, I found it much easier to teach sentence variety. Often times, before students would begin writing, I would simply ask students to use and highlight a particular sentence structure. I felt like I had finally found a functional, logical way to teach students to use punctuation properly.

Step 1: When students enter the room, a copy of the warm-up is projected on the screen in the front of my classroom. Printed copies of the warm-up will be sitting in the front of the classroom, right next to the door. Students know to grab a sheet when they enter. (See Figure 1 for the sample warm-up on semicolons being used in this explanation; click on the Figure to see a larger version.)

Step 3: After a minute I will start randomly calling on students to help me fill in the necessary background knowledge. I try to get through this process as quickly as possible. Sometimes I fill it in on my copy; sometimes we just go over it verbally.

Step 4: I read through the directions for the application exercise (1-3 in this case) and get kids started. As kids work, I quickly circulate around the room, focusing on students who I know are struggling. In most cases, I circulate for no more than about 1-2 minutes.

Step 8: After a minute or two, we are ready to correct the warm-up. Most of the time I will have students correct their own warm-ups. Sometimes I will have them exchange papers. I ALWAYS have the students put some type of grade on the warm-up, and I ALWAYS collect the final product. How you choose to grade these warm-ups is totally up to you. Because I call on students randomly as we correct the warm-up, I rarely have any issues with students not finishing. I also make sure that kids understand that this is a timed assignment and will often place a stopwatch on top of my copy under the document camera, so they can see how long they have to work.

Step 9: For the first three, I would simply call on a student randomly to tell me where he/she placed punctuation. If the student gets anything wrong, I will try to talk him/her through his/her mistake.

Step 11: Finally, for number five (see Figure 1), I would ask one student to identify the best response and to briefly explain why it was best. I would then go through the incorrect answers, asking random students to explain why each example was incorrect.

My preference is to complete approximately three warm-ups a week (30-35 minutes of instructional time). Because my school is now on a semester schedule with 60 minute periods, I still have 45-50 minutes to initiate and complete a lesson on days when I use a warm-up. If I need the whole 60 minutes, I skip the warm-up on that particular day.

Using warm-ups or any other type of worksheet will have zero effect on student achievement if it is not tied to extensive, repeated opportunities to write. I have always looked at these warm-ups as mini-lessons designed to improve the writing ability of my students, not as a replacement for authentic writing.

Hi Pam! Doug sometimes includes random words errors in the sentence revision sections to touch on some word errors that hang some students up. With those sections of the warm-ups, you want the kids to be able to speak to word errors, if applicable, when they are discussing why a given sentence is one of the wrong answers.

I have purchased this resource for use in 7th grade, and my colleague is interested in using it as well in 8th grade. Do you have a suggestion for this, or have you developed a resource to use before or after this program?

Hi Cyndy,

Doug and I have heard of teachers using the warm-ups digitally, and once in awhile we experiment with putting one warm-up on the projector and having kids do the work on their own sheet of paper. We find that that works well for some of the exercises (e.g., sentence creation) but less well for others (e.g., sentence corrections).

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