We began writing Christmas stories last week. Their guidelines: it has to do with Christmas. Some chose to write non-fiction personal stories, others chose to create a fiction story. Here are the steps we have in my class for writing our three paragraph stories:
Step One: On a large index card write a topic on the front and as many details as you can about it on the back.
Step Two: Divide your details into three parts on three small index cards. These become your beginning, middle, and end.
Step Three: Write a rough draft. Put your details into sentences and viola you have a paragraph!
Step Four: Edit your draft with the teacher.
Step Five: Make your corrections.
Step Six: Peer Edit
Step Seven: Write it neatly with no mistakes in your writing notebook.
Step Eight: Time to publish in book form!
This system works really well for us. We had a good 30-45 minutes of quiet diligent work time where my students were writing up a storm today! It was so nice. At the beginning of the work time I took a poll to see where everyone was at. I then wrote each student's number on the board with a key word to tell us where they were in the writing process. As the process progressed and they each got on different stages based on how fast they worked they would change what it said next to their number so they knew and I knew where we were at. For the board's sake we simply called the steps "index cards", "rough draft", "edit", "peer edit", "publish 1", and "publish 2".
Most everyone is on "Publishing 2" now where we are writing our paragraphs on white computer paper - one paragraph per page. They will then draw illustrations, make a cover, and a back cover. We will assemble them using page protectors and proudly display them in our classroom library.
Here is a picture of two students working on peer editing:
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