One thing that many students struggle with is coming up with ideas to write about during writer’s workshop. Although there will be times that students will need to write to an assigned prompt, there will be other times in which they will be able to pick their own topics. This lesson will focus on learning how writer’s come up with their ideas and having students make a list of ideas they can keep in their Writer’s Notebook.
Begin With a Read Aloud
A great read aloud to begin this lesson with is Ralph Writes a Story. In this book Ralph struggles with coming up with ideas to write about. But he learns that sometimes even small moments can turn into great stories. Look below for links for an online read aloud or the amazon link for this book.
After the read aloud discuss with students what Ralph discovers about finding ideas to write about. Have students first share with a partner what Ralph learned then share as a group. Talk about how even things you may think are small can become great stories. (There will be a lesson later about using small moments to develop stories when we look at beginning to write personal narratives.)
Writing From the Heart
To begin the next part of the lesson, you will model creating your own heart map to generate ideas for writing. If you are not familiar with this strategy, it was developed by the author Georgia Heard. These organizers are a place where students write down important things that are “stored in their heart. These ideas can then be used to help students generate ideas for their writing. For more information on Heart Maps, check out the links below.
Give students time to work on their own heart maps. Make sure to bring students back together to share their maps. These maps will be added to students writing folders.
For a free template to use check click the image below for a resource from Lessons from Ms Longbrake.
Now we have finished our introduction lessons for writer’s workshop, we will begin looking at beginning our first writing unit on writing Personal Narratives. Be sure and check back soon as I begin this new blog series!
Until then…
