Writing Station

Ahhh.... Sunday.  A day for rest, relaxation, lesson plans, and SAMPLES?  Yes, please!  

If we haven't virtually "met" yet, I'm Sam and I blog over at Mrs. Kelly's Klass  Come visit me sometime! :) 

I'm here on this glorious Sample Sunday to tell you a little about one of my kids' favorite stations!  If you're anything like me, then this is the time of year you start thinking about all the things you want to implement or change for next year.  So now is the perfect time to tell you about one of MY favorite stations.  Why do I love it?! Because it's low prep, differentiated by nature, and gives the kids SUCH a sense of pride in their writing!

This bundle of fun has literally everything we will use for a writing station all year long.  It's a progression of four smaller packs.  Kids go from labeling, to writing lists, to writing sentences, to writing books.  And my favorite part is that it lends itself nicely to differentiation.  Students are able to work at their own level for these writing activities! 

Start the year with some differentiated practice with labeling! 

This example has a key at the bottom for students to use when labeling.  There is also a set that does NOT have a key for students who are working on spelling using their letter sounds. 

When you're done working on labeling, challenge students to use what they have learned about letters and sounds to start writing words.  A great intro to writing words is List Writing!  

 Each list comes with a topic card that has 3 ideas to get kids started.  Students can write as many words as they have time for, then illustrate three of them! Maybe some of your students are only writing beginning sounds while others are able to write the whole words.  That's okay! Everyone is successful in a station that lends itself to differentiation! 

Once  students have had plenty of practice writing words, they are ready to practice writing sentences! There are 3 different sentence writing games we feature in our writing station. 

Two ways to work on unscrambling and illustrating simple sentences. 

These sentence starters are differentiated.  One set is blank for students to come up with their own sentence to match the picture.  The other set has a starter to get the kids going. 

I might have what we call "content books" out at the writing station all year long. Each topic comes with a book and an idea chart to use as a guide.  In the beginning of the year, students are just drawing pictures that go with the concept.  In the middle of the year, they might be drawing a picture and writing a word on each page.  Toward the end of the year, it is the hope that they are drawing a picture and writing a sentence on each page.  I can't even express in words how much the kids LOVE these open ended content books.  And they LOVE LOVE LOVE to read their book to their teacher and take their book home to read to their family! 

So there you have it.  An ENTIRE year's worth of writing station fun.  I'm not kidding you when I say it's that easy.  I love stations.  My kids love stations.  It's our favorite time of the day, but it can be exhausting planning 5-10 stations a week!  Writing station is one I never have to worry about.  I have all these things copied, filed, and ready to go at the beginning of the year and I just pull them out one at a time!

Something else the kids LOVE about these stations is that there is a degree of CHOICE involved.  I might have all the labeling scenes printed, copied, and organized in the writing station for 8 weeks.  So for that 8 weeks, students would get to choose which scene they are going to label that day.  Same goes for the lists and books!  

I put together this sample for you to snatch up!  It's got a little of everything!

Thanks again for coming by!  Hope you all have a wonderful school week! 

<3 Sam - Mrs. Kelly's Klass