WRITER'S WORKSHOP MINI LESSONS

Editing: Mini Lessons for Checking a Writing Piece for Capitalization, Punctuation, Spacing, and Illustrations, Etc.

The pencil anchor chart on the wall was created by me based on the work of the wonderful Kindergarten teachers at Washington Elementary School in Sheboygan, WI. They are a "Comprehensive Literacy School" based on Linda Dorn's work in Arkansas, and shared the pencil anchor chart idea with a team of teachers that visited them a few years ago. Thanks to them for their originality and generous sharing spirits!

Large Editing Icons for Pencil:
Small Student Editing Pencils:

Lesson 10: Asking, "Did I use punctuation?"

Gather students around the carpet area.

Briefly discuss what was learned the past few days...

Point to the pencil ANCHOR CHART on the wall.

	Color 8.5 x 11 Checklist Pictures	Empty Color Student Pencil Checklist Picture	Non-Moveable Color Icons Student Pencil Checklists	Moveable Color Icons Student Pencil Checklists

Remind students that good writers make sure that their pictures match their words.

Say, "We can use this picture of a sun, with the word 'sun' under it to help us remember what good writers do."

Remind students that good writers start their sentences with a capital letter.

Say, "We can use this picture of a GO sign, with the capital 'A' under it to help us to remember what good writers do."

Remind students that good writers leave spaces between their words.

Say, "We can use this picture of a pointing finger to help us to remember what good writers do."

Remind students that good writers stretch out their words to hear as many sounds in the word as possible.

Say, "We can use this picture of the boy with stretched out arms, to help us remember what good writers do."

Say, "We've been leaning about how to make our writing better."

By this time of year, students should have already participated in mini lessons about adding sentence stoppers.

Revisit the books you shared during those mini lessons:

Stop, Train, Stop!
City Signs
I Read Signs
Signs on the Road
Signsin our world
Mr.Pines Mixed-up Signs

Ask, "Why do writers use periods, question marks, and exclamation points?"

Facilitate discussion...

to stop a sentence
to ask a question
to show emotion (excitement, sadness, anger, etc).
etc.

Show the class the fifth picture for the ANCHOR CHART.

Ask, "What does this paper show us?"

Say, "Yes, it is a picture of a stop sign with the word 'stop' underneath the stop sign."

Ask, "What do you think this picture will help us to remember when we are writing?"

Remind students that good writers stop their sentences with a period, question mark, or exclamation point.

Say, "We can use this picture of stop sign with the word 'stop' underneath the stop sign, to help us remember that."

Point to the pencil ANCHOR CHART on the wall.

Say, "Let's glue this onto our pencil checklist to help us remember what good writers do."

Glue the picture to the pencil.

Remind students that the pencil can be used like a checklist.

Say, "Today we learned about stopping sentences with a period, exclamation point, or question mark."

Ask, "When I'm done writing, and I read my story, what should I do if I notice that I didn't use any sentence stoppers?"

Say, "If we forgot to use sentence stoppers, we should go back and add them."

Demonstrate how to do this on a sample piece of writing.

Say, good writers put periods, question marks, or exclamation points at the ends of sentences."

Say, "We can use this picture to remind ourselves that we need to make sure we have sentence stoppers in our writing."

Dismiss students for Writer's Workshop.

Resources:

Stop, Train, Stop! by W. Rev Awdry

City Signs Zoran Milich

I Read Signs by Tana Hoban

Signs on the Road by Mary Hill

Signs in our World by DK Publishing

Mr. Pine's Mixed Up Signs by Leonard Kessler