Informational Writing Complete

Hey guys! It's me, Melinda. I am here to let you know about my Informational Writing that I am finishing tomorrow. 

I will tell you it has been a LONG laboring process but as we wrap up our final drafts in the morning, it was well worth it all. 

My school had decided back in the summer the order that we were to teach the 3 types of writing. From December-March was to be informational writing. I spent December discussing Christmas around the word and the features of informational writing and texts. By the time we got back from Christmas Break my 3 classes were ready to go. 

I began by doing a couple group projects were we looked at nonfiction text and discussed items that had to be in our own pieces.During the class writing projects we discussed penguins and polar bears. I spent one week on penguins and one on polar bears.

Here are some pictures of some books that I used to help teach penguins.

I started by having a picture on chart paper. We discussed things we knew about the animal. Next, I gave the 1st and 2nd graders post it notes. As I read the books, they were to write facts that they thought were very interesting to them. Once that was finished, we placed them on the penguin chart. 

The next day we looked through all the stickies and decided what went together. Then we talked about what they had in common and made categories for them. My kids came up with 3. How they eat! How they live! How they look! 

From those categories, we began to write our papers. With 1st graders, we discussed Polar Bears. They had to write their own information into their book. We 2nd grade, they pick an animal of their choice and we researched the heck out that animal.  They were amazing. I created some graphic organizers to help them to build their paragraphs. (Especially since we had writing boot camp in August. Read about that here!) 

Tomorrow I will finish conferencing with the last 4 students and they will complete their final drafts. I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!! Those 2nd graders have worked so hard. 

Now I know you are probably asking, "What about the kinders?" We did ours as a class book. They helped build every part of an informational book. 

I thought that since you stopped by tonight, I would let you grab the organizers that I used with my students for FREE! That's right a FREEBIE!!! I hope that you find it helpful in your pursuits of informational writing. 

Click here for your FREEBIE!

I just wanted to take time to say thank you so much for all that you have done for me. I just wanted to let you in on a give away that will happen starting on Monday. Since I have made it to my 500 follower on Instagram, I am going to have a small give away. Stop by Monday and see what I am giving away and join the fun.