Writing Collections *Linky Party!

Courtney at Swimming into Second is having a writing portfolio linky party!

I’m on Spring Break! 
I will have to continue to mention this daily
But I made sure to take some pictures before I left. 

This year, our campus began a bunch of new writing initiatives. Stuff to keep us aligned. One of these was a writing porftolio. Not a fancy one; just a record of student writing samples in different genre so we can send it to their next teacher.

This is the way I do mine (and a lot of us do it this way, too).
Each student has a file folder with a checklist on the cover. These are the genre our kids have to write in (standards based) Personal Narrative, Imaginative Narrative, Poetry, Expository, Procedural, Letter, Text Response, and Persuasive. We call it their “Writing Collection.”

I only have Procedural and Persuasive left.

The pieces go inside. When we’ve written more than one piece in a genre, 
I have them choose the best one. It’s good for evaluating their own writing.

Bonus info!

While we are working on a writing piece, we use our Writing Process Folders.
Some of our teachers went to a training over the summer and saw this cool way to organize student writing. I’ll probably change it up a little next year to have a special publishing pocket, but this is the way they look now.

They’re pretty worn- we use them all the time!

You take two pocket folders and put one inside the other. Using a giant stapler, staple them together. It’s like a giant folder with four pockets.

One is prewriting. We put our plans and quickwrites here. 

Then there’s drafting and revising. Some have the S.T.A.R. graphic here as well.
You can read about STAR revising here.

Then there’s my five-finger editing hand. Each finger represents a different component of editing. I change it every year, depending on what that group of kids needs. Four are consistent: spelling, capitalization, punctuation, grammar. Sometimes the fifth represents spaces between words, handwriting, or paragraphs (indent).
Next year, I guess I’ll combine revising & editing, but a piece of me really doesn’t want to do it. Kids already mix them up, and there are big differences and each one is necessary. So I’ll have to think about what to do. Because now, we have to use our Editing pocket for Publishing, too, and I’m not crazy about that.
Suggestions?
So another initiative that’s new this year is our school-wide writing picture prompts. Each month (sometimes we combine two months, like November & December) the entire school (office staff and administration included) responds to the same picture. You can respond in any genre (whatever genre you’re supposed to be writing in) as long as it connects to the picture. Then, every teacher posts the entire class’ responses in the hallway along with the picture.
This is my December response. January is a text response about a lion article.
I’ll post up the latest one when we go back from Spring Break and I actually take a picture.
They’re poems about winter, because the picture has a family dressed in winter clothes,
 next to a snowman they built.
My kids really enjoy seeing how other classes respond to the pictures. 
Grab the  tools you need to make your own writing collection folders and writing process folders here in my Writer’s Workshop Resource on TpT!
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Writers-Workshop-All-in-One-Resource-3874031?aref=avd4po7a

So, how do you collect your student’s writing? Visit Courtney at Swimming into Second and link up!


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