Word Choice

Yesterday...voice. Today...word choice.

We spent a good deal of time after lunch today discussing word choice in our memoirs.  This is not the first time students were taught about word choice, we spent a lot of time exploring and using strong word choice in our adventure stories.

This round though, whew! They nailed it.  I saw thesauruses out all over, resources shared among tables, and pink highlighter filling rough draft pages.

Our mini-lesson was on the floor the last two days, close together, where they can truly focus on what I'm doing. We usually meet at my "blue carpet" in the back of the room where there is a bit more space, but this worked just as well, if not better.  I love feeling the closeness of us when I teach like this.  I plan to do it more often for Writing. 

Modeling what strong word choice looks like in my own personal memoir I'm writing along with my 5th graders.  They enjoy hearing my personal stories and like that I apply the skill they are learning to the writing piece I am working on.  

You'll notice the notebook on the floor.  That is my mentor "Mini-Lesson Notebook". I use notebook inserts for all of my literacy lessons. Here are the three inserts for Voice, Word Choice, and Message (we will hunt for Message on Monday)

Students are expected to have their Mini-Lesson Notebooks out whenever they are working on a writing piece. Keeping the notebooks purposeful and teaching students how to use them as a tool for learning has greatly enhanced my students' writing skills. 

Students at work today... I'm so proud of their stamina and attention to detail. 

As you can see, I'm loving this Memoir writing unit, and writing in general right now.  We are having fun, learning a lot, and displaying great writing ability.

Voice, Word Choice and Message

In Writer's Workshop, we are working on developing a few of the 6 traits of writing that we are scored on multiple times per year as well as on the report cards.

For our Memoir writing piece, we are focusing on Voice, Word Choice, and Message.  There are three areas that greatly enhance the interest of our stories and add great detail.

We are breaking these three skills apart and focusing on one per day this week. We are done with the first draft of our Memoirs (5 paragraphs total) and are now going through them, hunting for each skill.

Today we hunted for Voice.  When I first taught the 5th graders about Voice, I used the song "You've Got a Friend".  We listened to three versions of the song and discussed the differences we noticed in each.  The way we thought the singer was feeling and how they sang is voice! This lesson went better than I could have hoped for.  Every student was focused and listening to the singer so carefully. The image below are the words that came to mind when students were listening.

The 5th graders did a fantastic job noticing the voice in the songs and were able to then understand what voice means for their own writing.

We took time today to go through our Memoir drafts and highlight all of the voice in their pieces. They were given a hand out that states voice is noticed through a writers use of; dialogue, inner thought, and font style.

WOW! I was impressed by all the voice student's found in their drafts.  (Photos to come)



My 5th graders are looking forward to hunting for word choice and message this week.

Scholastic Book Order

Reminder: 

Our December book orders are due this week Thursday (December 9th).  They are guaranteed to be delivered before Winter Break which is great if you are thinking of ordering any gifts for your child or family members. 

You can use the order form that came home, or order online at scholastic.com using my code: MDHBW