Put some P.O.W. in your Writing!

I am SO excited to share my experiences with Teaching in Room 6's Paragraph of the Week!!!  Stephanie and I teamed up for the Magical Product Swap over at Mrs. Stanford's Class.  However, she didn't need to send me the resource for this - I was already using it in my classroom!

We've been using Stephanie's Paragraph of the Week (we call it POW!) since the middle of November - and we LOVE it!  My students were really struggling with the organization within a paragraph, and this resource came at the perfect time!  The structure and repetition is EXACTLY what my students need to master the concept.  And we're already seeing the results!

Paragraph of the Week contains prompts and scaffolded activities for 36 weeks!  The first 18 weeks have students mastering the structure and organization of paragraphs.  Students brainstorm ideas on Monday, write the body sentences on Tuesday, write the topic and closing sentences on Wednesday, and put it all together on Thursday.  (We use Friday to publish our paragraphs on the computer).  During the second 18 weeks, students take it a step further and work on editing, revising, and evaluating their paragraphs.  They brainstorm on Monday, write the whole paragraph on Tuesday, revise, edit, and reflect on Wednesday, and write their final copies on Thursday.

Stephanie includes 36 different and ENGAGING writing prompts for every single week (9 different prompts for each of:  "All About Me", "What Would Happen If ...", "Pick and Choose", and "It's A Matter of Opinion").  My students LOVE the prompts - as soon as we finish writing our paragraph on Thursday, they ask me what their next paragraph will be on.  And - they have actually CHEERED when I said to take out their POW folders.  You can't beat that!

We fit our POW writing into our daily writing part of the Daily 4 in my classroom.  It takes about 10 minutes a day - Monday to Thursday.  It's a PERFECT fit because we have chosen writing as our focus on our school improvement plan this year.  I whipped up this bulletin board to display our POW writing - each student has a specific place and name tag on the board.  At the end of each week, the student puts their new paragraph up, over the older paragraphs.  We're all about celebrating growth - and this will be such a great way to SEE that progress and growth happen.

  

I also have students working on evaluating their own writing using the rubric Stephanie provided in the resource, too.  All my students have their own writing goals (decided on during conferences with me). After they finish their paragraph on Thursday, they evaluate their writing through a glow and grow sheet I made up that also has the rubric included.  I evaluate the published copies after they have made some improvements.

This resource has been the BEST addition to my writing program this year.  You've got to check it out ... and guess what - it's on SALE from now through Sunday!  Just click on the picture to the right to see it.

Stephanie is reviewing one of my resources today, too.  Click on her button below to see what she's writing about ...