The Teacher's Desk 6...: paragraph

Showing posts with label paragraph. Show all posts

May 10, 2016

Tuesday Writing PaWs: Memorial Day

This week's Writing PaWs (Paragraph a Week) is just in time for an upcoming patriotic holiday. This particular topic is not found as part of the original Paragraph a Week program, but rather one that I created for this year's group of sixth graders to accompany an art project from Art with Jenny K. that we are currently completing. Watch for an upcoming blog post detailing the finished projects.

You can download your free PaW instruction sheet HERE.

April 12, 2016

Tuesday Writing PaWs: Living in the Past

There is such a wide variety of topics in the PaW (Paragraph a Week) line-up, from stories to letters, narratives to arguments. Some of my favorite topics are those that require young authors to do some research before they can do the actual writing. This week's Tuesday Writing PaWs is one of these. Assign a decade to your class (or allow each student to choose), adjust the controls of your time machine, and set your young authors free.

You can download your free topic sheet HERE.

February 23, 2016

Tuesday Writing PaWs: Reading

As teachers we realize the deep connection between reading and writing. However, our students don't often see the importance or make the connection. That's our job. Paragraph a Week (PaW) was one way that in the late nineties a group of connected teachers developed to help our students increase their writing skills. This week's PaW topic celebrates a favorite author's birthday and asks student authors to write about reading. You can download your free topic sheet HERE.

Do you have any topics that you'd like to see featured here on The Teacher's Desk 6? Leave a message in the comments. I will be glad to create a topic sheet to share!

February 9, 2016

Thank Goodness for the Tuesday Writing PaWs

As I was checking through the PaWs (Paragraph a Week) topics that I still haven't shared with you, I was reminded of the time so many years ago that I spent collecting and formatting these writing gems. While many were developed by me, just as many were submitted by fellow connected teachers. Thank goodness for all of those dedicated teachers who were so willing to share! "Thank goodness," what an interesting phrase! You can download this week's PaW topic sheet HERE.

If you are using the Tuesday Writing PaWs topics in your class, I'd love to hear from you. Have the topics impacted your writing class? Has PaW changed the way you teach writing? Please leave a comment below or send an email message to me. I'd like to include your impressions and opinions in an upcoming blog post.

February 2, 2016

Tuesday Writing PaWs: Catholic Schools Week

In honor of Catholic Schools Week being celebrated this week, the Tuesday Writing PaWs features a special CSW topic. You can download your free topic sheet HERE.

January 26, 2016

Tuesday Writing PaWs 1.26.16

It's good to be back after our quick little break. Hopefully you all enjoyed the new Show and Tell linky that pre-empted the Tuesday Writing PaWs last week. This week's PaW is the thirty-first Paragraph a Week topic shared with you here at The Teacher's Desk 6! I think this week's topic will be perfect for those of you in NE Ohio and all along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. You can download your free topic sheet HERE.

December 15, 2015

Tuesday Writing PaWs: Presents

One goal of the Original Paragraph a Week Program was to grow our students' writing skills in a progressive manner. We began with the student goal of independently writing a well-organized, detailed, literate paragraph and gradually pushed our students into writing well-organized, detailed, literate essays. This week's PaWs features a topic for one such essay. You can download your free instruction sheet HERE.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The Tuesday Writing PaWs will return with a brand new topic in mid-January.

December 1, 2015

Tuesday Writing PaWs

The Tuesday Writing PaWs (Paragraph a Week) returns today after a brief pause with a holiday writing prompt. You can download this week's free instruction sheet HERE.

Don't pause too long on this post, however, or you might miss the final hours of the TpT Cyper Smile Sale! Just click the pic to be taken away to great savings on terrific teaching products. Be sure to enter the promo code SMILE during checkout!

November 17, 2015

Tuesday Writing PaWs: Holiday Smells

This week's Paragraph a Week features one of my favorite topics: figurative language. I like to read figurative language, I like to craft figurative language, and I like to teach figurative language. It brings reading and writing to life, painting pictures in one's mind, causing one to feel and react to text. After listening to and reading texts with numerous examples of figurative language, students are ready to try their hand at writing it. This week's Writing PaWs features the Smells of the Holiday.

You can download your FREE Paragraph a Week instruction sheet HERE.

For more Paragraph a Week topics visit the tab at the top of the page.

The Tuesday Writing PaWs will be taking a pause from posting next week. A new topic will be posted on December 1, 2015.

November 10, 2015

Teaching Tuesday: Thankful for The Tuesday Writing PaWs

One of the best things that ever happened to my teaching was Paragraph a Week (PaW). This simple weekly writing program provided a framework for building student fluency in writing, reinforced the writing process, and established a homework routine. Although my students mumbled and grumbled each week as I passed out the topic instruction sheets, they also could see improvements in their written compositions. I can't tell you how many students that I have seen in the past few years who have commented about Paragraph a Week, stating that it really helped them learn how to write. What more can a teacher want?

You can download this week's FREEBIE PaW topic instruction sheet HERE just in time for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.

Be sure to stop by HoJo's Teaching Adventures for more Tuesday Teaching ideas!

November 2, 2015

Tuesday Writing PaWs on Mind Boggling Monday

The Tuesday Writing PaWs is a day early this week. I wanted to sneak this topic in soon enough so it coordinated with the actual date that it references. Many PaW (Paragraph a Week) topics celebrated notable historical events. The originators of the topics wanted our students to make connections to content area material in their compositions in English class; integrating material was all the buzz back in the 90's (it was the Common Core of its time). You can download your FREE weekly writing topic instruction sheet HERE. If you are interested in additional PaW topics, simply click the PaW tab at the top of this blog post where you can find all of the available topics.

Even though I am sharing the Tuesday Writing PaWs today, I just can't skip Mind Boggling Monday. My kiddos look forward to playing boggle each week so here's a fun board that coordinates with this week's PaW topic.

Not sure how to play Boggle? Click HERE for the original game rules.

Need a Boggle board that you can edit yourself? Click HERE for a free editable board.

Want a blank boggle board template for your students to use with classroom boggle? Click HERE.

How about a variety of editable boards to change with the seasons? Click HERE for a bundle of fifteen.

Be sure to visit HoJo's Teaching Adventures for great teaching ideas with the Teaching Tuesday linky party.

October 27, 2015

Tuesday Writing PaWs: A Change of Setting

This week's writing PaW (Paragraph a Week) is a companion piece to last week's PaW. This topic is a fun way to introduce the concept of setting and what happens to the plot of a story when the setting changes. Hey, doesn't that sound a bit like a Common Core Standard?

You can download your FREE PaW topic sheet HERE.

Other PaW (Paragraph a Week) FREEBIES currently available can be downloaded below. This list is arranged in no particular manner and contains single and multi-paragraph topics.

Leprechauns
Earth Day
Mother's Day
Finish the Phrase
Nice
National Pencil Month
Favorite Valentine Memory
Bird's Eye View of Spring
Abe and George
Journey of a Snowflake
Color
A Tribute to Johnny Appleseed
School Uniforms
Chocolate Rain
Good Substitute Teacher
Favorite Relative
Allowance
Best Teacher
Signs of Fall
Making Sense of an Apple
Do You or Don't You Halloween?
Favorite Halloween Activity
Pumpkin Contest Part 1
Pumpkin Contest Part 2

I'm adding this blog post to a brand new linky hosted by one of my favorite bloggers.

Be sure to check out the wide variety of terrific teaching ideas at HoJo's Teaching Adventures.

October 20, 2015

Tuesday Writing PaWs: Focus on Fall

The original Paragraph a Week (PaW) Program was a set of approximately 30 single topic paragraph prompts that were developed by a cadre of 5/6th grade teachers around the globe. Although the original program is no longer available LIVE online (I closed down my website where it was housed), you can still access it via the web archive Way Back Machine.

After using the PaWprogram for a year, I clearly saw the growth and maturation of my students' writing. Because of this, I asked my connected teacher friends to help me continue growing the topics. Soon we had another 30 plus topics, many that required students to now write multiple paragraphs, as part of PaW. Some of these year two prompts even required students to write a second/companion piece. This week and next week's PaW FREEBIE is a set of coordinating prompts about a pumpkin contest. You can download the information sheet HERE.

October 13, 2015

Tuesday Writing PaWs: Favorite Halloween Activity

When the original Paragraph a Week (PaW) Program was developing we teachers had such fun writing topics. However, there was no rhyme nor reason to them. Knowing that students retain and grow in learning when material is presented in logical ways, we decided to rearrange and design the writing topics to follow the school year events, holidays, and seasons. The last few weeks and the next two take advantage of the autumn season and beloved holiday of Halloween.

Last week students were asked to take a position about celebrating Halloween. This week they are asked to describe a favorite Halloween activity. You can download the FREE direction sheet HERE.

October 6, 2015

Tuesday Writing PaWs: Do You or Don't You Halloween?

One of the things that all of the contributors to the original Paragraph a Week program tried to do was provide our student writers with a wide variety of writing topics and genre. This week's PaW Freebie is a position paragraph about a favorite holiday soon approaching. I know my sixers are already planning costumes and thinking about our classroom party. However, not everyone is as excited about Halloween as we are!

Just click HERE to download your PaW instruction sheet.

May 19, 2015

Tuesday Writing PaWs: The Best Teacher 5.19.15

The school year is quickly winding down. There are only 10 school days left (and a few of these are fun days with no classes)... EGADS! Just as the year is winding down, so, too, will the Tuesday Writing PaWs. This will be the last weekly topic for the year, but don't fret. The Tuesday Writing PaWs will appear the first Tuesday of each month during the summer and resume weekly once school returns in late August.

This week's PaW's a great topic for us teachers to see what our students think about GOOD Teachers. You can download the FREEBIE instruction sheet HERE.

The Tuesday Writing PaWs will return June 2, 2015, with the topic AROUND THE WORLD.

May 5, 2015

Tuesday Writing PaWs: Allowance

Last week during our Tuesday Writing PaWs, Amy M. asked, "Do you have a strategy for how you work through these [prompts] in a week?"

Paragraph a Week (PaW) itself was not originally meant to be an instructional strategy as much as it was a practice strategy. PaW was intended to be independent practice of what was being directly taught during our (the developers) Language Arts classes, specifically the writing process. Writing was not something that was just over and done in one sitting; rather it required planning, doing, checking, and redoing over a period of time to allow the writer to make changes and improvements.

While we implicitly taught the steps of writing in our classes with specific prompts and lessons, we required our students to write outside the classroom following these same steps. PaW helped us meet this need.

The PaW prompt was passed out in our Language Arts classes on Monday. We read the instructions together carefully and answered student questions. While the actual assignment was not due until Thursday (some PaW teachers collected the assignment on Friday), we encouraged our students to follow a weekly ritual that helped them implement the writing process and allowed them to spend time with their writing.

Monday evening was meant as a re-reading of the prompt and a brainstorming session. Many of the prompts came with procedures to help the students pre-plan their writing via webs, flow charts, lists, etc.

Tuesday evening was meant as a rough draft and initial editing/proofreading session. Here students were required to get the input of an adult writer by asking a parent or older sibling to help them proofread.

Wednesday night was the night to polish the draft and complete the final copy to be turned in first thing Thursday morning.

The beauty of PaW is that you can tailor it to your student needs! Use it one week and not the next. Collect the assignments on Thursday one week while on Friday the next. Check the progress of your student writing by requiring them to show you each step of the process along the way. There is no right or wrong way to use Paragraph a Week... just use it!

This week's FREE PaW can be downloaded HERE.



Topics soon to appear during the Tuesday Writing PaWs:

My Favorite Outfit

Good Teacher

April 28, 2015

Tuesday Writing PaWs: Mother's Day

Paragraph a Week (PaW) was initially developed before commercial writing programs became popular and was designed to foster a writing routine along with teaching necessary writing skills. Routine can be good, developing consistent habits, but it can also become a bit "boring". Therefore, the group of PaW creators tried to include a wide variety of topics in many genre to keep students motivated and interested in their writing. They tried to provide students with choices within a single topic. The following PaW topic regarding Mother's Day (fast approaching) is one that allows for some student choice. You can download your FREE instruction sheet HERE.

Other PaW (Paragraph a Week) FREEBIES currently available can be downloaded below. This list is arranged in no particular manner and contains single and multi-paragraph topics.
Leprechauns
Finish the Phrase
Nice
National Pencil Month
Favorite Valentine Memory
Bird's Eye View of Spring
Abe and George
Journey of a Snowflake
Color
A Tribute to Johnny Appleseed
School Uniforms
Chocolate Rain
Good Substitute Teacher
Earth Day

Topics soon to appear during the Tuesday Writing PaWs:
My Favorite Outfit
Good Teacher
Allowance

April 21, 2015

Tuesday Writing PaWs 4.21.15 Earth Day

For this week's Tuesday Writing PaWs I'm sharing a topic that appeared nearly two years ago on this blog. It was one of the first times that I mentioned Paragraph a Week and one of the first freebies that I ever offered. This week's topic is in honor of Earth Day and involves the skill of writing in a specific letter format (a two-fer lesson, the best kind in my estimation). You can download the instruction sheet HERE for use in your classroom.



Topics soon to appear during the Tuesday Writing PaWs:

My Favorite Outfit

Good Teacher

Allowance

April 14, 2015

Tuesday Writing PaWs 4.14.15: Favorite Relative

One feature of Paragraph of Week (PaW) was its intent to not only present a topic to write about but to also teach elements of good writing. Often within the text of the topic were specific writing skills as you can see from this week's FREE writing PaWs. Notice the first paragraph of the instruction sheet contains text that explains what a good paragraph should contain. You can download your FREE PaW topic sheet HERE.



Topics soon to appear during the Tuesday Writing PaWs:

My Favorite Outfit

Good Teacher

Allowance