A Year in Review: Writing Portfolios

As I sit here on my first day of summer vacation, I am reflecting on my most recent school year. I just finished my third year of teaching first grade. I can't believe how quickly the time has gone! As I reflect, my most exciting addition to my classroom this year was the use of writing portfolios. It greatly impacted the way that my students viewed their writing this year. We had many discussions and celebrations of students' progress!! As I continue to use these portfolios in years to come, I'd like to continue to work on improving the way that I have my students self-evaluate their own writing.

Here's a look at our writing portfolios!

I decided to start these portfolios at the last minute in August. I ran to the Dollar Tree and picked up twenty 1 inch binders... next year, I am putting these on our school supply list!

I labeled the spines and we kept the portfolios on a shelf in the classroom. Many students wanted to keep them in their desks, but I knew that they would be destroyed in the chaos of a first grader's desk.

UPDATE & FREEBIE HERE: One problem that I had with labeling the spines was that the labels peeled off throughout the year. This year, I am going to get the binders with the clear pockets on the sides so that I can slide a label into the spine. Grab my updated cover for the 2015-2016 school year and my spine labels here.

Our writing portfolios include 37 writing samples, one for each week of the school year. When I created this product, I mapped out each week and included a variety of different types of prompts. Here's a peek at the way I mapped out the 2014-2015 school year. (My product includes the same document, but I removed the weekly dates since I know that everyone's school year is a little different).

We completed an entry in our writing portfolios every Friday morning and students really loved the routine. We began on the first Friday of the school year. I made it a very serious deal and we even put up our "office dividers" to have a more private work space. This helped students to stay focused and think seriously about their writing.

Right from the beginning, I introduced my students to this checklist on the back side of their portfolio writing paper. Students went back and checked for various pieces in their writing. In the future, I'd like to differentiate this checklist a little bit throughout the school year.

I kept the writing pages very simple so that there are no distractions from the students' writing and illustrating. Here's an example of Week #1.

One thing that I love about using these writing portfolios is that they are such an EASY, SIMPLE assessment tool for me! Having weekly samples of student writing is a blessing and parents LOVED to look through them at parent teacher conferences.

Here are examples from two different first grade students. One writer is more advanced and the other is an intervention student.

My intervention firstie:

My advanced firstie:

It was so fun watching each of these darlings grow in their writing this year... along with the rest of my class!!

If you are interested in using writing portfolios in your classroom, please check out my Writing Center: Yearlong Writing Portfolio. It could be used in most lower elementary classrooms, including kindergarten, first, second, and third grade!

Build A Sentence Interactive Word Work!!

Blogging... two days in a row??? It must be spring break! Oh my gosh. I am soooo enjoying a relaxing week at home to catch up on school work, run errands, and binge watch Gilmore Girls.

This morning, I started prepping my word work for when I return to school next week. I wanted to come up with a fun activity for students to interact with parts of speech as they are creating sentences and I put together this super simple idea, Build a Sentence Interactive Word Work.

Yesterday, on my errands, I picked up this awesome cardstock on sale at Michael's Craft Store.... 3 packs for $10!! Woohoo!! I had lots of fun colors to choose from as I put together this activity today!

I started by printing each of my word sets 

{nouns - verbs - adjectives - prepositions/conjunctions/articles} 

on different color cardstock.

Then, I cut the cards apart and mixed them together. There are 60 word cards all together.

As I began making sample sentences, I realized that 60 word cards may be overwhelming for my firsties when we begin this activity for word work. When I introduce this in my classroom, I plan to start with half the cards and then gradually add in more words in future weeks.

Here's a sample of the types of sentences that students can make.

I also created a printable to go along with the sentence building cards so that students can write their sentences. We will have to talk about adding uppercase letters to the first word in the sentence and punctuation when we write the sentences... since the cards are all lowercase letters so that the words can be used anywhere in the sentences.

And there you have it... a fun, simple, interactive activity! Can't wait to use it with my firsties next week! Enjoy!

Spring has Sprung!!

I am very happily writing to you from my spring break Monday morning. Nothing better than your first morning of not setting an alarm. Pure bliss!!

Spring has arrived in our classroom and I'm currently in the works of prepping more spring activities for when we return from spring break!

RAINBOW SIMILES

Last week, I tried out a new craft and writing activity from Teacher by the Beach and I LOVED it!! Her FREE activity can be found on her blog... click this link to view her post!

Here's her photo of the finished product! Apparently, I forgot to take a photo after I hung ours in the hallway.

We wrote Rainbow Similes and made some rainbow artwork to go with our writing!

We began by brainstorming things for each color of the rainbow. It was a perfect chance for us to use the "pair and share" method of sharing ideas with a partner before sharing with the whole group. Here is a peek at our brainstorm... please excuse my disgusting, smudgy whiteboard!

Then, I added to Teacher by the Beach's idea by creating a "planning page" for my students to write their similes on. I have many students in reading/writing intervention this year, so I knew that they would need a little more guidance to create their similes.

Here's a photo of one of my adorable firsties making his final copy! Students traced over their writing with a Sharpie, which was very exciting for them and make the writing look crisp and clean!

After finishing our writing, students made rainbow artwork.

Such a fun activity! Now our hallway looks so bright and cheery!

APRIL WRITING AND PHONICS PRINTABLES

Click the photo or this link to see this in my TpT store.

This past weekend, I created by second set of Writing and Phonics Printables... now ready for APRIL! I wrote about this idea in my March post, but I created these simple monthly printables as take-home activities for my first grade students who are in need of writing intervention. I had a solid group of about 5 students who came into first grade reading below grade level. They are making great gains in reading so now I'm focusing more on their writing and phonics/spelling skills. I have a fabulous group of parents this year who want additional resources for their children to work on at home. I've received great feedback from those parents after completing similar resources for the month of March... so here we go... ready for the month of April.

Now, that being said, these could easily be used in the classroom as well!

Here's a look at some of the activities included in the pack. Click this link to download 5 of these printables for FREE!

A FREEBIE and A STEAL!

Finally, I have a few Easter/Spring math activities up my sleeve. The first one is a freebie!! Grab this fun Easter Math Sort from my TpT store! Can't wait to work this into my math workshop centers!

Finally, the steal! Grab this Spring Mini Math Book for only $1.00!!! Skills include name collection boxes, missing number subtraction, adding/subtracting 10s, What's My Rule? (function machines), fact families, and telling time to 5 minute increments.

Well, that's what I have for my spring activities! Can't wait to check out TpT for other activities I can grab for next week!

Writing Portfolios

If you have been reading my blog over the last couple of weeks, you know that I am totally spicing up my Daily 5 Work on Writing this coming school year. My students will be rotating to five Work on Writing centers throughout the week... working at one center each day. These centers are for more informal practice of writing skills that we are working on and my purpose is for them to be FUN and ENGAGING! We have a separate Writers' Workshop time in the afternoon where we will work on more formal writing projects and we will spend time planning, editing, revising, etc. Now, that is not to say that I will not stress BEST work during the Work on Writing centers as well, but my goals in creating these centers are for my students to LOVE writing and to be creative!

1) The Creation Station (click the link to see my previous post)

2) Story Central Station

3) Handwriting Practice

4) Sentence Building and Puzzles

and for the purpose of this post...

5) Writing Portfolio Work 

Okay, that being said, the Writing Portfolio Center will probably be the "least fun" of all of the centers, but I am soooo excited about the assessment opportunities that it will provide for me.

Last week, I made a trip to the Dollar Tree (in my opinion... the "TOP DOG" of dollar stores...) and I bought a binder for each student in my class.

I plan to keep the binders and reuse them each school year, so I figure that buying them myself was an investment in my classroom (and binders are not on our school supply list). When the portfolios are finished at the end of the year, I will take out the pages and bind them into a book for the kiddos to take home!

This morning, I printed a slapped a little label on the edge of the binder for each student. I have a perfect little spot on a book shelf for the kids to store their portfolios. As a side note, I FINALLY figured out how to PRINT ON LABELS... in the past, I've been using Sharpies to write names on labels because I've been too lazy to find and download a printable template... well, ladies and gentlemen, it is EASY! I don't know why I've been avoiding it the last few years!

If you want to pick up these labels, they are Avery 1" x 2 5/8" white address labels, 30 labels per sheet. Here's the link to the free template on the Avery website.

Okay, enough about the set-up... I created a writing prompt for each week of the school year.

Each prompt is labeled with the # of the week and there is a place for the kids to write the date at the top. There is a place for a picture if the kids would like to draw a picture to accompany their writing. Some of the prompts encourage the kids to draw a picture and others do not.

The back of each writing prompt page has more lines for the students to continue their writing... and my favorite self-check tool, a quick checklist for the kids to check their writing before adding it to their writing portfolio binder.

Here's our fun cover page that my kiddos will color and personalize during the first week of school!

This is going to be my source for assessing students' writing weekly. Even if the kids miss a week at the center here and there, I will have TONS of writing samples to see their progress over time!

Okay, so my Writing Center: Yearlong Writing Portfolio is up in my TPT store. I designed this writing portfolio with first graders in mind, but it would be appropriate for most lower elementary classrooms!

Can't wait to get this up and rollin' this year! Enjoy!

Writing Center: The Creation Station

Okay, here we go people... I cannot wait to get back into my classroom (it is being cleaned right now) to set up one of my writing center areas for this coming year!

 

THE CREATION STATION

Everything in this post is 20% off in my TPT store until midnight on August 1st!
Plus, there are many FREEBIEs embedded in the post itself!
Enjoy!
 

My goal in putting together this center is to have a place where kids can go to CREATE! Kids will have the opportunity to go to the Creation Station once a week as part of our Daily 5: Work on Writing and they can make cards, postcards, letters, and lists. As the school year goes on, I hope to find other fun seasonal writing activities to feature at the center.

 

 

Here's what I created to hang above the wooden desk where I will have the center.

 

Grab these decorations/labels for free here!

 

At the center, I plan to have fun writing supplies and various writing tools throughout the year.

 

star tins from {Target}

I also picked up a great set of seasonal word helpers... We will feature "Words of the Month" at the creation station for kids to use in their writing.

 

 

Grab your own set of A Year of Words from Renee Dooly's TPT Store. There are lots of other things that I plan to do with her word cards... these long ones (featured in the pink basket) are perfect for our creation station.

 

Okay, so our three YEARLONG activities at the Creation Station will be

 

{LETTER WRITING}

 

{POSTCARD WRITING}

 

{LIST MAKING}

 

I created sets of materials on TPT for each of these forms of writing with different writing paper, lists, etc that correspond to each month of the school year.

 

Here is a FREEBIE that combines the September portions of each of the three types of writing. If you like what you see, please consider buying the YEARLONG sets of each!

  

Here is what the

LIST MAKING

will look like:

my example

In my experience, first graders LOVE making lists. When we do Work on Writing and they are working on "journal writing," kids are always writing lists of the things that they like to do, the people in their family, their friends at school... and I am always telling them to "add more detail" or "tell me more about those things." Now, I will always encourage them to add more details into their journaling and descriptive writing, but I figure... WHY NOT give them the opportunity to make lists in a productive, organized way!!

 

Each month, there will be new rings of list topics at the creation station. For every month, I created 17 little task cards (+1 monthly cover page... hence the odd number of 17 task cards). Some of the list topics will be themed for the given month and others will be more generic.

 

 

I picked up these cute baskets from the Dollar Tree to hold the task cards.

 

There is also a variety of list writing paper with a new border for each month. In this file organizer, I have two of the list making sheets on the top shelf and on the lower shelves, I put our two featured letter writing sheets for September (more later about that)!

Click the picture below if you are interested in my complete set of list writing centers.

Here is what the

POSTCARDS 

will look like:

my example

This is a totally new idea for me, POSTCARDS.

 I think it is a great, quick way to get kids writing and it's not overwhelming for your emergent writers!

Back to School themed postcard

 Each month, we will have new postcards in the writing center that are themed to the month.

Again, I couldn't pass up these awesome baskets....

Click the picture below if you are interested in my complete set of postcard centers.

Here is what the

LETTER WRITING

will look like:

my example

During our free choice time on Fridays, my kiddos are always writing notes and letters to their friends and family members. Each month, we will have new letter writing paper in the center.

I also hope to get more letter writing resources for the creation station. Leave a comment if you have any great letter writing resources for my kiddos to use!

Click the picture below if you are interested in my complete set of letter writing centers.

I hope that you enjoy this post about our CREATION STATION! I cannot wait to see it in action this fall!