Author's Celebration for Our Writing Group !

Last night we had our AUTHOR'S CELEBRATION to celebrate all the hard work that our children did during the past year in Writing Class. We had about 24 young author's come from our class to read their work aloud in front of family and friends. We awarded the children with certificates of completion. In Writing Class, we use INSTITUTE FOR EXCELLENCE IN WRITING as our curriculum. I have used this curriculum for teaching writing now for three years and I have found it the BEST out there. It is flexible enough to "coach" a variety of children at different levels and bring them to the next level in their writing. IEW alternates going from fiction to nonfiction "styles" of writing. IEW focuses on adding in "elements" called "dress ups" to increase the form and maturity of the writing.

In addition to IEW, in our writing group, the children participate in Wordmasters Challenge ! The wordmasters challenge is an exercise in critical thinking that first encourages students to become familiar with a set of interesting new words (considerably harder than grade level) and then challenges them to use those words to complete analogies expressing various kinds of logical relationships. Working to solve the challenging analogies helps students llearn to think both analytically and metaphorically. Though most vocabulary boosting and analogy solving activities have been created for high school students, the Wordmasters materials have been specifically designed for younger students in grades three through eight. They are particuarly well suited for able and interested children who rise to the challenge of learning new words and enjoy the logical puzzles posed by analogies.

In wordmasters, we awarded all children with their certificates. We had five children reach the "second honors" level for their grade level and six children "reach the "first honors" level for their grade level. Way to go children !