Writing on Topic

As Reading Workshop students start the school year as beginning bloggers, the challenge of writing and writing well looms. Although students have written for teachers in the past, organizing a blog post to make it interesting and understandable is a new skill for many.

As a student, if you are struggling, here is a template to make your writing easy for the reader to get. This is basically the five paragraph format that you will use as a student for as long as you are in school. 

1st paragraph--Introduction

2nd - 4th paragraph--Body

5th paragraph--Conclusion

The latest assignment is to write a blog post highlighting one area of a book that students have read this year. This is how it should be organized:

Introduction/Paragraph 1
The book    (insert title)     written by     (author's name) is one of the most   (insert topic--exciting, funniest, happiest, saddest, greatest, drama filled, scariest, etc.)    books I have ever read. From the second you open it up until the last page you . . .

Body/Paragraph 2
One example from the book is . . .

Body/Paragraph 3
Another example from the book is . . .

Body/Paragraph 4
Another example from the book is . . .

Closing/Paragraph 5
This is an exciting book. If you love . . .

Please feel free to put this format into your own words. You can be creative, but it is imperative that you follow this format. Failure to do will will result in an essay that is hard to understand. Make it easy on the reader and organize your writing.

Start of the Year Blog Post

Students' first writing assignment in Reading Workshop was to write a blog post about one of the most significant events that occurred with the start of the new school year.

You can read all of the blog posts HERE

Reading for Understanding and Score Better Too!

So Reading Workshop students, do you want to get a better score on Study Island? Use the tips from this video and use the highlighter from Study Island and your scores will soar. These tips will also help when you have to read something in social studies and science.

Want to Know Your Grades?

If you want to know your grades just go to Jupiter.  Jupiter Grades is an online program (similar to Engrade, Progress Book, and others) that hosts students' grades and other information so that students, parents, and teachers can access them at any time from anywhere with Internet access.

All of students' grades and information about discipline and behavior will be posted on Jupiter. Students can check their grades daily during Brave Period, the intervention period that starts every day. If you are a parent, you will soon be receiving information to enable you to view your child's grades.

Writing an Essay/Blog Post

Building an essay is just taking yesterday's lesson one step further. The basic idea for building a paragraph is expanded into several paragraphs. The organization is the same.

Here is another of Mr. Heath's videos that explains the process.

Writing a Paragraph

Reading Workshop students have been setting up their blogs. Now the task of becoming a writer is ahead. We will start by looking at paragraphs and how to set up the basic paragraph.

This video by Mr. Heath explains the basic parts of a paragraph, the topic sentence, supporting details, and the conclusion.