Fundamentals of Writing

I have students in my classroom that at all different levels. I went to this workshop when I first moved to Minnesota. It's a Kanasa Learning Strategy. I really love this writing program. It starts out basic and then moves into more challening sentences. Everyday, it reviews subjects, verbs, capital letters and end punctuation.

Somedays this is a very hard concept for my students and somedays they are being able to answer all the questions right away. In each level there are what they call, "Cue Cards." These cards have information on them and reminders for students on what they need to do. There are also practice worksheets for the students. They are labeled A-H. In front of them they have a number that matches with the lesson we are on. There are also worksheets that has them writing their own sentences using the materials we have learned. The way the worksheets work is that the student has to get a certain percentage on the lesson before they can move on. You normally start out with the paper that says B on it, because you do the A paper together. If they do not reach the percentage on the first try you go over the sentences and then have them try it again.

When we started this out, I would just write the sentences on a white board. I was always erasing them to write a new sentence and that took time. I decided to then use the Smartboard. Before the students came, I would type the sentences into the notebook. This way when we worked on the sentences I would just turn on the Smartboard and we were able to make the corrections. Once they were done I would close it out and not save it. This way when we would go back and review, we always had the sentences without the answers.

Here is some pictures of what the folders look like, the progress charts I made, what the lesson worksheets look like and the students working on correcting the lessons.

 

I always make notes on the progress sheets if they needed help and if they struggled with it.