No More "I'm Done!"

Normally I do all of my reading over the summer but when my reading teacher showed me this book I just had to read it.  Because I am doing my National Boards this year I have been focusing a lot on writing in my classroom.  This book is great!! It goes through how you should set up your classroom to foster writing. It gives suggestions for tools that you can have available for students to use and best of all it gives you ideas for mini lessons that cover the entire year.

Here is what I have implemented so far from this book.

~I was always a writing journal type (it kept things more organized).  Now each student has their very own writing folder.  In my writing area I have different types of paper for students to choose from.

~Conference board.  When students are ready to show me their work they add their name to the conference board.  After we meet and talk they erase their name.

~After my mini lesson I give students 10 minutes of uninterrupted time to write.  It was hard in the beginning to not hoover and want to make suggestions, but I have found that they do their best writing during that time. After the 10 minutes I start to call students for conferences.  I also try to play classical music during those 10 minutes to keep their brains working.

I will keep you posted on what else I implement...