Story workshop

This week our grade 2/3 class started story workshop. Story workshop supports the student's literacy and social-emotional development. They are invited to find and tell stories from their real or imaginary lives using various mediums. Storytelling plays an integral role in language development and strongly supports children to see themselves as storytellers and authors of their ideas. As the children gain confidence in their roles as storytellers and authors, they begin to express their ideas through written symbols and alphabet letters using inventive spelling. Story workshop supports this writing process by immersing children in an environment rich with print and meaningful language while giving them daily opportunities to try out their new skills. Support and encouragement are assigned to each student's progress with feedback from both teacher and peers while recognizing and celebrating their continued growth. Story workshop is only one of several ways to address the writing process. Over the following weeks, I will share other ways that are also used to develop a balanced approach to class writing skills. 

Below is the process that a single grade two student demonstrated while engaged in story workshop throughout the week. First, he used loose parts to explore and use his imagination to develop a basis of a story. He then created a story map to represent his ideas while focusing on the story's beginning, middle, and end. Then with the support of his teacher, he is beginning to learn how to edit his story. Finally, while working together, his teacher supports him in instructing a mini-lesson that focuses on one or two of his own individual writing needs.   





The snake built a place to sleep in the winter and it fell down. The snake built stabilizers and it didn't fall onto it. The next time it snowed the snakes were able to stay warm. 

While editing with the teacher the focus of this session was a review of the magic or mean "e" in order to change a short "a" vowel to a long "a" as in snake as well as the "ay" ending as in stay. The "ed" ending was also introduced.  

Comments

  1. RamsayAdminSeptember 20, 2021 at 8:06 AM

    Thank you for sharing this learning process, Ms. Harris and Grade Two student! We love hearing about all of the ways you experience literacy learning at Ramsay School.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Emily Carr

Image
The story of Emily Carr was a sure way to inspire our class and connect our learning to our focus book  The Tree in Me  by Corinna Luyken. Despite being scoffed at by her older sisters for her desire to do her art, Emily Carr did not give up. Instead, she was true to herself and profoundly impacted the Canadian art scene. Like many of the Group of Seven artists, Emily’s work was inspired by Canada’s natural rugged world and indigenous landscapes of the west coast. We created a thoughtful piece that used tints, shades, foreground, mid-ground, and background as a class. We also explored warm and cool colour theory. We spent some time thinking about the words, descriptions, and emotions associated with warm and cool colours. We discovered that warm colours are often associated with happy, joyful emotions. They are linked to sunshine, the daytime, and summer and autumn. Cool colors can be used to express sad, calm, and tranquil emotions. They can be linked to water, nighttime, and the wint
Read more

Week of June 26th

Image
 This will be my last entry for the grade 3 class of 2022/2023! We have had an amazing June filled with great explorations and time outside. I would first like to say a big thank you to the parents who made our National Indigenous People's Day such a wonderful success. The students had a fantastic time exploring Prince's Island Park and participating in many hands-on learning tasks outside in nature. The goslings and ducks did not disappoint!  In class, we finished off the year by writing a letter to our new grade 3 students. Sharing with them all of the wonderful things they have to look forward to as they begin a new year in room 8. After brainstorming our entire year of events and activities, we found it hard to believe all of the learning and adventures we could participate in. We also had fun this month revisiting our poetry unit and creating Limmercks and more Haiku poems. Our math year ended, reviewing past lessons and exploring translations.  In the first part of this u
Read more
Image
Week of Oct. 12th  This week we started one of several lessons which focus on writing a personal narrative. We discovered a personal narrative is simply a true story about you. This can be tricky for students, so supporting them to break this task down with several mini-lessons is extremely beneficial. Our first mini-lesson was designed to help them understand what a personal narrative is and how to brainstorm a topic that they feel is worth writing about. When we brainstorm we think about all of the different things we can write about and find the best possible topic to write about. When you brainstorm personal narrative topics you can think about memories you have about things that have happened to you, fun things you have done with your family or friends trips you have taken or special places you have visited, activities you have done at school or anything else that has happened to you in your life. We discussed that it is important to choose a topic that you care about and remember
Read more