Author's Chair
We have been busy, busy, busy learning how to write descriptive stories the last couple of weeks! We began learning about writing descriptive paragraphs by first discussing our 5 senses. We know that we use our 5 senses (sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing) to learn about and describe everything around us. We have learned that when we tell others about different things, we are describing them using our 5 senses. Last week, we took a deeper look at our animal stories we have been reading regularly during spelling and phonics and we learned how to use our 5 senses to describe what those animals look like, sound like, and feel like and how we could tell about other facts we have learned to describe them. After going over some examples, each child was able to choose an animal of their own (from the stories they had already read multiple times) and could then work through using their 5 senses to describe them. When they were done planning their stories, they learned how to draft a story and put that same information they had collected into a complete story. They have been working on an writing introduction sentences, detail sentences as well as a closing sentence. After they finished their stories, they worked on trying to edit them using a writer's checklist to make sure they had all the right information and their writing mechanics were all there (caps, ends, finger spaces, penmanship, etc.).
When this process was complete, the class spent a day reading their stories to the class at author's chair. This is when they get to use a fun microphone and read their stories out loud in front of the class.
The class thought it was super fun to be able to use an real microphone that made their voices project for the class to hear! You can watch some of our friends reading their stories to the class below. While an author was reading, the rest of the class worked really hard to show whole body listening during author's chair so that they could hear everything that each author had to say!
After our first attempt at writing a descriptive story, we moved on to writing about something everyone had gotten to experience during our Solar System day last week! We moved on to describing and writing about Astronaut Fruit!!! This was something that the first graders had a ton of fun trying during our special day last week and they had a blast getting to try the fruit again only this time under more scrutiny, using their 5 senses to help them describe what they were seeing, smelling, feeling, tasting and hearing.
Chloe and Amelia both said their fruit tasted pretty sour. You can see they weren't so sure that they liked the ones they tried.
Joey was busy feeling the different pieces of fruit, using his sense of touch to describe the pieces of freeze dried fruit that he had.
Cora was busy using descriptive words to tell what her fruit looked like, smelled like and felt like. Next, she moved on to taste her food and then tell what is sounded like when she chewed it. I loved hearing the variety of descriptive words they were coming up with on there own. One friend said some of her fruit tasted sweet while others were very tangy!
After going through an example as a group, all of the students received a 5 senses planning page, a helping of astronaut fruit and set out to work, using as many describing words as they could!
The next day, we focused on how to take those descriptive words and form them into complete sentences as they wrote. Finally, the first graders wrote their descriptive paragraphs and again, used a writer's checklist to go through the editing process and fix up their writing for their completed draft.
As a final step, students will be publishing their stories onto Seesaw! Stay tuned to hear their stories read aloud to you there! I can't wait to hear them all!
