This weekend my school hosted a great speaker for a writing workshop. Yes, normally I hate going to workshops on Saturdays...blah blah blah. However this one, a voluntary one that we were "encouraged" to attend, was wonderful. I feel as though I didn't waste my Saturday or lose wonderful "sleeping in" sleep. Our writing coach had been to this training and begged our principal to invite the guest speaker. After some negotiating with another elementary school, to help with his cost, she called him up. Who was it? Bill MacDonald! Mr. MacDonald also referred to as the Writing Doctor was amazing. We started our workshop off with about 15-20 4th graders attending. He spoke to the students and we got to see superb "modeling"! The students were so into the presentation...they even got to win prizes. ($20.00Wal-Mart gift cards) The whole purpose of his training is to help your students who are at a 3 on the writing taks move to a 4 (perfect score). As a lower grade teacher (1st grade) I thought wow, is this really going to help me...
YES! Many of his strategies were to help the 4th grade teachers in the next month or so move the kids up to a 4. However, the afternoon proved to be valuable to all grade levels. He referenced as much to K and 1 teachers, as he did the 4 and 5 grade. The whole day flew by with out even a second look at the time...and many amazing ideas were given to us. These are a few of the important ones....(as a lower grade teacher that I will do to help my upper grade friends)
- penmanship...the state looks at penmanship!!!
- the student should write a sentence as long as their age... i.e if they are 6 then their sentence should have 6 words in it
- the student should have as many details as their age....similar to the first point, each story for a 6 year old should have 6 details
- blah blah blah....needs to become BLING!!!
- quick games to help get bling...don't let kids write the same things, make them find new ideas for the same thing. Such as going to the beach....well have an amazing or unique thing happen at the beach
- quick list....where students must answer a question with the first thing that pops into their head. ex: I say a food, hamburger...kids yell McDonald's. Help the students come up with new ideas or unique ones for hamburger...such as Kincaid's (a non-chain or such)
- think time...give them the topic think it over for a day...then write about it (this way you get better details and endings)
I really did enjoy the day...he passes out tons of door prizes and some freebies which makes it even more worth while. If for some reason your school needs writing help, look him up! I have attached his blog and his store website...I won tons of posters (and 20 bucks) that will be wonderful in my room.
Blog: http://thewriteprescription.blogspot.com/
website: http://www.thewriteprescription.com/servlet/StoreFront
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