The Power of Prewriting

Reading

This week we reflected on our reading responses from I am Not a Number and The Secret Path.  After

taking up their work the kids self-assessed their responses against the success criteria and made note of
what they could do to improve the next time they are asked to write a response to another text. The kids
also continued to work on their independent novel studies and shared a few more novel related Minecraft
creations.

Oral Communication

This week we talked about what active listening looks and sounds like during class discussions and
students put this into play while we took up our work form Orange Shirt Day. Students were encouraged
to build off of each other's ideas as they shared their thoughts and feelings about both stories. We had
some more really great thought-provoking discussions.

Our plan for memoir writing. First draft to be finished for Tuesday, October 15.

Writing 

This was a big week for writing. We started by watching the classic NFB film, The Sweater which is an
animated memoir written by Roch Carrier. We then reviewed the writing process before we began the
work on our own short memoirs. We co-created the success criteria for this assignment and then got

down to work. We started the prewriting stage by having conversations about possible memories to
share and then reviewed the work that we had done with our quickwrites for inspiration. I really stressed
the importance of spending lots of time planning before writing and shared that students who brainstorm
and plan before writing responses on the OSSLT tend to do better.  We took advantage of the beautiful
fall weather and moved our classroom to the courtyard to get our creative juices following. Students
worked on their first drafts which are to be finished for Tuesday so that we can move into the revision

stage of writing.

Idea generation through talking.

Courtyard writing with 78

Courtyard writing with 8D