Pencil and Paper Pals: A Fun Weekly Writing Club for 3rd - 5th Graders

Are you looking for a writing class for your child? One that will allow for creativity, thinking, and fun? Come join this weekly writing club as I work with your child to foster and cultivate a love of writing. 

Each class will follow a structured format: introduction of learners, engaging with the weekly prompt (through a story, video, activity, etc.), brainstorming and sharing ideas, writing time, and sharing. This is designed to help develop and strengthen your child's writing skills in a fun and relaxed way. 

Our introduction time will be a perfect way for your child to practice listening and speaking skills as we get to know who is in our class. When introducing the writing prompt, I may share a short story, pose questions, or have learners make connections about our prompt.

 As we brainstorm and share out ideas, I will have a variety of graphic organizers (webs, outlines, draw/write, etc) that will help to develop and organize your learner's ideas. As your learner writes, they will freely respond to the writing prompt---there is no right or wrong way to record their thoughts. 

Helping your learner get their words down on the paper will be one of my main focus/goals. Modeling and facilitating writing with your learner will help to build their confidence. As your learner writes, they will be encouraged and instructed on how to expand ideas and stretch out the sentences to give more detail. 

At the end of class, your learner will share their writing with others in the class. I will model how to give "glows" and "grows" by sharing something I liked about the writer's piece and something to think about to make the writing even better. Breakout rooms will be used for help give 1:1 guidance to your child during our writing them. Additionally, break out rooms will be utilized to help students each other.

All the questions/prompts used in this class will be a chance for your learner to exercise their mind by reflecting, observing, thinking, or creating based on the given prompt. Sometimes we'll even have silly prompts such as if you could combine two animals to create a new animal, what would you create? What would your animal be able to do?

The schedule is currently planned around these topics/ideas but please know based on class interests, topics may vary slightly. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Week 1  
   Using Your Imagination - Creature Combinations (creative and descriptive writing)

Week 2 
     Fact Writing - Nonfiction topic of your choice (nonfiction writing)

Week 3 
      Picture Prompt - create your own story based on a given picture prompt (creative writing)

Week 4
      In My Opinion: Best Job Ever (opinion writing)

Week 5
      My Favorite: telling about your favorite seasons, book, movie, game, etc... (personal writing)

Week 6
       Descriptive Writing - a monster/creature theme (descriptive writing)

Week 7
      Making Choices: Would You Rather? (opinion writing)

Week 8
      How To - writing instructions (how-to writing)

Week 9
       Book Recommendation - bring along your favorite book to share a review (persuasive writing)

Week 10
      Silly Story - word game to create a silly story (creative writing)

Week 11
     Personal Narrative - Proud Moment (personal narrative)

Week 12  
      Letter writing 

Week 13
       Writing Poems

Please note writing prompts/thinking questions will change from week to week based on student interests, seasonal appropriateness such as if if it's near spring, a prompt may be "Describe your perfect day outside." Other examples may include: "Describe your dream job", "Write about something you are good at doing", or even "If you could land on a magical island, what would it look like and what would it have?". All questions/prompts will be updated on the class page as needed.

Finally, I will provide an optional class challenge after each meeting. This is given so that parents may have additional opportunities to have their child engage in during the days we don't meet. If complete, your child can send their work to me and I will provide comments and feedback to help keep your child on the right track. It is a great way to provide extra support and reinforcement, should you want it for your child. 

If you need more information on how ongoing classes work, please visit:
https://support.outschool.com/en/articles/2272596-ongoing-classes-for-learners