Thursday, January 16, 2014

Finding Writing Inspiration

Our second unit of study in writing--writing nonfiction/teaching books--is off to a good start. But, I did notice that some students were having difficulty thinking of topics and writing with the informative voice of a nonfiction author (a "teaching voice"). So, we looked for inspiration in the many nonfiction books in our classroom library. We found it! Not only did students become more familiar with what's available in our classroom, but they also discovered a sampling of what they might be able to teach about in their next nonfiction book. Students "shopped for ideas" and jotted them down on a sticky note. We then came together to create a chart that hangs in our classroom for inspiration. Check out the amazing readers/writers at work gathering ideas below...









This is our first chart of topic ideas. The next day, we brainstormed together about things we are experts about and created another chart to go along with this one. Now there should be no shortage of writing ideas! Now to study the "insides" of these books in more detail for further inspiration. :-) (I will post a picture of the other chart--the student generated "expert" ideas--soon). 


Here are some writers hard at work--writing nonfiction teaching books and blogging on Kidblog. Everyone gets to blog during Writing Workshop on his/her share day. 



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