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Hello! I am a third grade classroom teacher at a Chicago charter school whose students are primarily immigrants or first generation citizens. We have a very diverse class, with 20 students who are Bosnian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Pakistani, Indian, Nigerian and Vietnamese.
Most of my students speak English as their second language. While their oral language skills may seem fluent, most have a more difficult time with writing. To encourage writing I have tried to make writing as relevant to the real world and as engaging as possible. This year we will be writing friendly letters to pen pals, biographies of a family member, poetry, publishing a monthly class newsletter and researching a Chicago landmark.
To accomplish all of this we hold a daily Writer's Workshop, in which the students each work at their own pace through the stages of the writing process: pre-writing, first draft, peer editing, revising, conferencing with me and publishing.
To make writing even more enjoyable for my students I would love to have some writing "tools" and a small storage center for our Writer's Workshop! During Writer's Workshop my students sit wherever they are most comfortable to write and many choose to sit on the floor, so it would be great if each student had a clipboard to write on. My students peer edit each others' drafts and colored pens (not red!) would make editing marks easier for the students to see. A classroom thesaurus would help to improve the students' vocabularies, my students who speak English as a Second Lanugage would especially benefit from learning synonyms for common words. The students favorite part of the writing process is publishing! While we type our classroom newsletter, most of their writing is handwritten and the students love to publish on "fancy" paper with pre-printed borders and decorations. Finally, I encourage my students to be responsible and appreciate their classroom supplies, so it would be great to have a small storage unit with drawers to keep all of our Writer's Workshop tools neat and easily accessible.
Having these writing tools will make writing more engaging and exciting for my students. And the more they are engaged, the more they are learning! Thank you so much for your time.
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