Since the beginning of the year 5R have been inquiring into personal narrative writing. Yesterday, we celebrated the publication of our first stories with a publication party! We shared our writing over glasses of bubbly grape juice and toasted our progress as writers.

Today, your child has brought home a “publication package” containing a copy of the story they shared during our Writer’s Celebration, their original idea seeds, various early drafts and revisions, experiments with leads and endings, and a range of assessment documents.

I have asked the students to sit down with family members and share the process they went through to take their story from “seed story” to publication.  They have put a lot of work into these stories, and their work is worth celebrating.

Attached to the story, you’ll find one checklist completed by your child.  You will also find a checklist completed by me.  Please note that there are some points on the checklist that we did not cover in our mini-lessons during this unit.  These are:

• The use of transitional phrases.
• Some conventions of paragraphing, such as for dialogue.
• I varied my sentences to create the pace and tone of my narrative.
• I used commas to set off introductory parts of sentences; I also used commas to show talking directly to someone.

I scored these parts anyway to reflect your child’s current use of these techniques, but we did not spend time going over them during class.

I have also sent a laminated sheet of information for parents about Writing Workshop.  At the bottom of this page, there’s a section about how to talk to your child about writing.  I hope you will find these prompts helpful as you chat with your child.

Please enjoy sharing this writing with your child and help them to return the entire package, in its envelope by next Monday, November 21.