Lost in Writing

Ever felt lost when planning and trying to decide how to teach something that just doesn't make sense to you? Well that's been me when teaching writing for the last couple of years.  Narrative, opinion, informational...I get it! I know I'm supposed to teach them all-and I did-but I still just felt lost.  I normally pride myself on teaching in a way that helps my kiddos make connections but writing just seemed like it was out there all by itself without a purpose.  So I set out to figure out a way to teach writing so that it made sense to my kiddos and me!

I started out by taking a step back and thinking about how to correlate the different writing types with the units I already teach in reading.  In the past, it was always Narrative at BOY-which I always thought was way too hard and involved for my kiddos to do well at that time of year. Then onto opinion at MOY with lots of Would You Rather? writing prompts. Finally EOY with informational-which is my personal favorite BECAUSE they were designed to compliment science units and made sense. They all worked and the kids learned how to write but it just seemed very disconnected from my reading.  It just seemed like I was checking off the boxes...reading-check, writing-check, word study-check but without connections and focus.

So, I thought...and talked to my colleagues...and thought...and talked to my teacher bestie and thought and decided to do a complete 180 and start the year with Informational How To writing to go along with a science unit on sound.  It seemed easy enough...right? I jumped in and we planned how to make a music instrument, fancied it up a bit and low and behold...it worked!  The kiddos ended up with simple but effective how to pieces, and the best part is that writing them didn't seem like a chore to the kiddos. It just seemed like a logical way to communicate what they had learned through writing.

Here are my plans for the year...now remember they are "plans" and are subject to change but I'm excited about the ideas I've come up with for writing this year.  How do you organize teaching writing in your classroom? Please comment below...

Sound Unit-How To Make a Musical Instrument (informational writing)
Economy Unit-My Craft is the Best! (opinion writing)
Long ago/Today Unit-________ is the better than ________ /person, invention, etc. (opinion writing)
Multicultural Unit-Personal Narrative writing (narrative writing)
Health Unit-All About Dental Health(informational writing)
Life Cycles-All About Butterflies, Ants, Frogs (informational writing)