Possible K–2 Focus Lessons

Workshop Management & Procedures	Author’s Craft/Writing Strategies	Conventions
Creating a Community of Writers ●      Talking about our writing histories ●      Giving a tour of your notebook ●      Sharing entries from a previous student’s notebook ●      Talking about your writing with another person	Generating Ideas ​●      Making different types of entries in Writers’ Notebooks/folders ●      Using entries in a Writer’s Notebook/folder as a springboard to writing projects ●      Choosing meaningful topics ●      Exploding a moment	Spelling ●      Reading your piece aloud ●      Reading your writing backwards looking for spelling errors ●      Using dictionaries and spell checkers to fix your own mistakes ●      Learning strategies for studying spelling words ●      Noticing spelling patterns, rules, and rule breakers
Procedures ​●      Using notebooks and/or writing folders effectively ●      Using classroom writing resources: dictionaries, thesauruses, spellers, computers, word walls, clipboards, Alphasmarts™, etc.	Composing ●      Placing like ideas in a paragraph ●      Using strong verbs to improve writing rather than simply adding lots of adjectives ●      Creating visual images with words (snapshots) ●      Focusing your writing on one particular thought or idea ●      Playing with the passage of time in a piece of writing ●      Showing ideas in writing versus telling something ●      Adding voice to your writing ●      Writing in a variety of formats ●      Writing in third person ●      Using mentor texts ●      Using variety in sentence construction	Grammar ●      Finding and repairing run-on sentences that were not intended to be written as such ●      Using commas (most important rules) ●      Using a consistent point of view ●      Using quotation marks in dialogue
	Revision Techniques ​●      Organizing ideas ●      Checking for appropriate pacing of stories ●      Using a title that reflects the writing topic ●      Using specific words and precise language (e.g., name of bug instead of just bug) ●      Rereading the sentence that tells what the piece is most about, and then finding the 1 or 2 sentences that have the least to do with the main purpose ●      Taking a long draft and making it shorter ●      Breaking the story into chapters ●      Writing the story from a different point of view ●      Focusing on audience ●      Working on strong beginnings and endings Trying techniques of mentor authors	Mechanics ●      Capitalizing proper nouns ●      Placing appropriate punctuation at the end of sentences
		Publishing ●      Typing or recopying ●      Completing final illustrations ●      Completing dedication page, author page, and cover ●      Reading your piece to your audience