All fifth and sixth graders throughout the state of Connecticut work on Expository Writing - both in the traditional five paragraph form and in the compare/contrast form (which could be five paragraphs as well.) During the year we take several writing prompts that mimic that timing and conditions that students will have for the writing prompt on the Connecticut Mastery Test. This will be our main writing focus and students will have a lot of opportunity during the year to work on expository. 

Writer's Workshop

Although we will be spending a great deal of time on expository, I also have students do a lot of short creative writing assignments. One of the problems that students can potentially have with expository is that they can lose their creative side and start to fall into the trap of trying to fill the five paragraphs in a very orchestrated, robotic fashion. It is very important that students do not fall into this trap. In fact, good expository writing shows a lot of imagination, creativity and flows with descriptive segments. It is very difficult to score in the top tier (10-12) without maintaining a balance between organization and creativity.

Therefore, in our classroom we will be involved in a Writer's Workshop. Some students have done a form of Writer's Workshop before, but just because they recognize the name - Writer's Workshop - that doesn't mean they have done it the same way we'll be doing it. Since I've made up this version of Writer's Workshop (which is a Lynch blending of workshops from a few experts in the writing field such as Ralph Fletcher, Barry Lane, and Lucy Calkins), I can guarantee you they've done nothing like it. This will allow students a lot of freedom in their writing choices, it will help them become better writers overall, but most importantly, it will hopefully let them enjoy writing no matter what their attitude about writing is coming in to fifth grade. 

Spelling

Students take a Spelling Test almost every week consisting of 25 words and a bonus word. The first 20 words are from our spelling program, the last five are from past National Spelling Bees (early rounds), and the bonus word is from a variety of different sources and often include some of my favorite words like aardvark or llama. Students are required to complete a variety of assignments each week. Sometimes they are given very specific tasks to complete and other times I include a list of possible tasks (on the back board) and students can choose which ones they want to do.(For example, they might have a list of eight assignments and must choose four.) Assignments could be anything from creating a crossword puzzle with the words to writing each word in cursive three times to writing a funny story with all the words. On Mondays students take a pretest and on Friday they take the real test and that is when the assignment is due as well.

Grammar

We start every school day with Morning Work that includes five math questions and five grammar questions. Sometimes we correct these in class, sometimes we use them for an activity (like a writing activity), and sometimes I grade them. I almost always collect them and use them for data on what students need to work on individually as well as what we need to focus on as a class. I do whole class lessons that involve grammar, but I prefer to weave these lessons into some type of writing activity.