Lesson Planning Link-up- Writing Curriculum

Welcome back to the planning series for the upcoming school year. Back in May I hosted a lessons learned link-up where bloggers shared their highlights of school year. Now it's time to begin the subject-based planning portion of the series. This week's topic is writing.

Have you figured out how you will teach writing next year? Writing was a bit of a struggle for us in the past, but last year I discovered The Writer's Jungle and I intend to use it again this year. It is not a writing curriculum, but rather a writing philosophy intended to create an enjoyment of writing. Communicating thoughts and ideas in a logical descriptive way are the primary goals. Grammar, spelling and punctuation are seen as important, but covered separately or as the very last step in a polished writing assignment.

Last year I had my kids write about three times per week. For the most part I selected the topics for the two older kids to write about. Occasionally I had them choose one of their free writes to polish. Following the principles described in The Writer's Jungle I tried to help them create interesting beginnings, add detail to their papers and organize the information in a logical manner. Some of their papers were published on their blogs (For A Kid by a Kid and Jeenland95) and a few were entered into a writing contest.

This year I plan to follow the same process for improving writing, but I want the topics to be much more kid directed. My goal is for them to be proficient writers. I plan to spend 30-60 minutes each morning focused on writing. Whether they choose to  create a Poetry Journal, Nature Notebook, Stamp Collecting album, write short stories, novels, or letters to famous people they are writing. I will encourage them to have some variety of topics and require that a small portion of their material is polished. If they are stuck I will give them ideas, but I hope this will be a year of writing inspiration and not struggles.

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Now it's your turn. Please share your writing plans.

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Be sure to visit next week to share your plans for Math.

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