This writing workshop class will cover an in-depth study of narrative writing.    We will look at craft moves used by published authors, and try to include them in our writing.  We will look at using punctuation and capital letters in our writing.  Students will work on adding movement and dialogue to their short stories.  Students will also start to add transition words to their writing to create flow and show time passing. Students will share their writing and get feedback from their teachers and in week 5 we will do our first peer review.  Students will learn about the writing process and take their favorite piece of writing through this process for a publishing party in week 6! 

Each Week Students Will:
Students will be sent short 2-3 mini-lessons per week that will guide their writing.  All of the mini-lessons will be posted on Mondays and can be viewed as students wish, to complete the assigned work.  These videos will be available for students to return to as they are completing their writing. 

Students will also participate in 2 discussion board posts each week. 

Students will comment on someone else's post at least once a week to engage with other learners.   Learning from our peers is one of the best ways for students to build an understanding.  Students will leave feedback on the published piece of writing each week for another student.  Students will be encouraged to use the video function on Outschool to provide feedback. 

Schedule for weeks 1-3.   Student work from weeks 1-3 will be used to create the content for the last 3 weeks of this course. 

Week 1: 
Creating a writing space.  Where will you write?  What things do you need in your writing space? Getting your writing space all set up to go.   We will also explore a heart map, mapping the things that are important to us that we may want to write about. 
Discussion Prompts:  
Post a picture of your writing space and describe the materials there. 
Share your heart map of the topics that are most important to you.
Assessment: Write to a prompt so that lessons can be catered to students' levels of need. 

Week 2: 
What can you add to elaborate on your story?  Adding movement, and dialogue to stretch our stories. We will also work on transition words in our writing to tell the order in which the story happened. 
Discussion: 
Let's brainstorm our favorite transition words!
What types of things are the characters in your story doing today?
Assessment: Share your favorite piece of writing from this week.   

Week 3:
Grammar Week.  How can we improve the grammar in our writing? This week will focus on capital letters and punctuation. 
Discussion prompts: Fix this sentence, with a choice of multiple sentences a different one for each student. 

Common Core Standards to be covered: 
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.3
Write narratives in which they recount a well-elaborated event or short sequence of events, include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide a sense of closure.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.5
With guidance and support from adults and peers, focus on a topic, and strengthen writing as needed by revising and editing.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.8
Recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.2.2
Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.2.2.A
Capitalize holidays, product names, and geographic names.