The Writing Workshop: Endings

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

by Laura Numeroff

(Click on the book cover to be redirected to Amazon.com for bibliography info and to purchase the book!)

3rd grade Common Core Standards:

ELACC3.W.3- c. use temporal words and phrases to signal event order

d. provide a sense of closure

In the Writing Workshop...

Write a narrative that has a circular ending (goes back to the beginning)
When the circle song comes on, come back to the sharing carpet
Students are given a piece of circular paper to write on: on one side they were asked to write a "circular" narrative, and on the other to decorate the paper as a cookie

Questions and Discussion points from class:

Ray: Product vs. Progress? Testing in general
Focus more on progress
Chelsea brought up a point about the summative grades that are given in Pre-K. The progress is written in narrative form for the parents to better understand their child holistically.
What is helpful? How do we grade writing?
Ray speaks about questions- what people ask, they are asking about you and who you are as a person/ teacher. In class, we ask students questions we know the answer to; outside we ask what we don't know the answer to
Grading- how to grade writing?
Jo brought up a rubric (0-2) where students wrote what they thought they earned, and gained the knowledge as to what they needed to add
You have to have a clear rubric to do this.
www.rubistar.com is a great tool for creating rubric