“A group of differentiated activities, without teachers understanding and embracing the rationale and reasoning behind them, comprise little more than a cookbook. Once the activities have all been used teachers
have no way to generate others effectively” – Tomlinson
have no way to generate others effectively” – Tomlinson
VOICES WRITING MENU
At GMS, we utilize the Daily 5 structure K-8 and have found that our students have experienced a lot of success because of the strategy based learning and small group instruction. As a team we decided to find a way to incorporate our favorite pieces of the Daily 5 structure into a Writers Workshop format. We also decided to focus our PD sessions on improving our writing instruction and each teacher committed to having 60-180 minutes of writing time blocked into their schedules each week. We used our collaboration time to acquire and share resources and develop a basic outline for Writers Workshop that each teacher could make their own. Our common collaboration times, and PD sessions for writing instruction lead by our division literacy specialists.
All of the classes in our school has adopted the Voices menu to guide writing instruction and to maintain a consistency for our students as they move from one class to the next. Voices menu parallels the structure of the CAFÉ reading menu strategies for comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and vocabulary. In Voices menu there are the headings of Voice, Organization, Ideas, Conventions, Excellent Word Choice, and Sentence Fluency. Similar to the CAFÉ reading menu the Voices writing menu comes with many writing strategies that will reinforce those headings. I use these writing strategies to drive my writing lessons. For example, I will begin the writing main lesson by putting up a menu item onto our Voices board and then base my lesson from that specific strategy.
Within our classroom we dedicate two out of five days a week to writing within our daily 5 schedule. We use Write to Self in place of Read to self and Write to someone in place of read to someone. Instead of guided reading groups we do guided writing groups where we as the teachers are able to work with students in small groups and really get down to the basics with them.
GRADE 1/2: 2 - 90 MINUTE BLOCKS WITH A WRITING FOCUS WITHIN OUR DAILY 5 TIME EACH WEEK
VOICES Strategy taught to the whole group at the beginning of lesson and then reinforced in the Guided Writing groups.
Read to Self – Write To Self, Read to Someone – Write To Someone, Guided Reading Groups – Guided Writing Groups
In our classroom we use a Morning Message written on the white board for the kids to copy down in their agendas every day. It is a very simple sentence with words from our word wall. It is great practice for the kids and a great routine in the morning. In some of our morning messages we do sentence starters where we leave blanks in the message for the kids to finish. For example, I like to _____________ at school.
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