Blog Entry #3

 As I read this week, I began to think about how I may have better planned for my former students. The former students I taught over the summer were in 6th grade going into 7th. They really struggled a lot with writing especially because of covid and them having to be online.

Although I tried to make them write as much as possible by giving them writing prompts every morning to free write about, I feel like there was a lot more I could've done to enhance their writing skills. One activity I would've done with them is the "composing sentences" activity (Tompkins, p. 73-74). I would've done this because my students struggled a lot with creating full and complete sentences. In this activity they would unscramble phrases and rearrange it to make it into sentences. This would help students practice building sentences so they could eventually build them on their own.

Another thing I would do with my students, (how I wish I read this book prior to teaching them), would be having time for a writing workshop everyday. I would do the "Vivid Verbs" mini lesson so students would understand the importance of verbs in a sentence, Tompkins, p. 77). Once we completed the mini lesson, they would take what they learned into a writing workshop and practice writing sentences with verbs. I would give them the opportunity to write completely about whatever they want but they need to remember to incorporate verbs.

I genuinely love this book and think it is very helpful. It also has given me so much insight on how I can guide my students in the future when it comes to writing. Writing is difficult, I even struggle with it, so I would love to be able to incorporate these into my classroom eventually.