Shared Writing

Our school is currently part of a Writing Residency based on the works of Regie Routman.  Though it isn't taking place in Room 4, I have had the chance to check out a lesson and have conversations with the teachers involved. 

We are currently writing poetry in Room 4 and one of the strategies discussed in the residency is the idea that students become better writers by first watching their teacher write.  The next step can involve the students writing together. 

We did this by creating a poem about our class.  We followed the template of an I Am poem, where each lines begins with I ____________.  We decide to take poetic licence and change it to We ____________.  Then the creativity really started to flow. We had a lot of fun (and a lot of laughs) coming up with the ideas.  When we had trouble, we went on the the next verse, got a thesaurus or dictionary to find new words, and used a classroom resource called "Banish Boring Words" that has tons of great adjectives and adverbs you can use to add detail to your writing.

After a lot of revising, editing, reading and re-reading, this is what we came up with.  I've included a picture of our writing, but I have copied it down for you below.  

We are

We are valuable
We wonder what the end of the year will bring
We hear laughter through out our days
We see our friends by our side
We want to stick together
We are a community

We pretend we are in "the cafe"
We feel safe, happy, proud
We touch each others souls
We worry about our future
We are a family

We understand we sometimes get upset
We say sorry when we need to
We dream of what lies ahead
We hope this chapter will never end
We are Room 4

-by the 20 members of Room 4





Next, we did some shared writing. Students brainstormed together and read aloud possible lines they could add to the poem.  The students are currently finishing up their I Am poems and I will be sure to post them when they are ready to be published!

 Happy Reading and Writing!