Writing About the Community: People and Places IEW (Part 1)

This is the FIRST of a 2 part class designed for second and third grade students based on the thematic curriculum "People and Places in Our Community" from the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW).

Note: Students should be able to write words and short sentences upon entering the class because we will be developing these further.

Throughout this class, students will learn how to outline and write basic paragraphs as they begin to develop style and structure. To do this, students will participate in four steps over time: 
1) learn to create a basic outline from a given article
2) retell an article aloud in their own words
3) write a basic paragraph using their outline and verbal retelling
4) add stylistic techniques to enhance their writing  

Each week during class, students will interact with the teacher and other students to practice building on writing skills through modeling in the required book, discussion, and short games.  The games may use the chat box, on-screen annotation, and verbal exercises.  

All activities will reinforce the concepts of both writing style and writing structure as well as the theme of community people and places.  

After gaining the basics of outlining through class and homework, we will begin to develop short compositions.  Students will use a checklist to format their paper with their name, capitals, spacing, end marks, and begin to practice adding description to their writing called "dress-ups".  The dress-ups of focus for this session are -ly adverbs and who/which clauses.