Welcome back from Winter Break! We have begun the new year by learning the steps of the writing process: pre-write, write (rough draft), edit and revise, and publish. It was important for the students to understand that when authors write, they re-visit their writing in multiple ways to improve it. I compared the writing process to the process of building a snowman: just as a snowman will fall over without a strong base, our writing won’t hold up if we don’t have a strong pre-write. We were excited to become “real authors,” so we began right away.
I read the book, ‘The Snow Globe Family” by Jane O’Connor to the class. Here’s a summary from Amazon: “Oh, when will it snow again? wonders the little family who lives in the snow globe. They long for a snowstorm? if only someone in the big family would pick up the snow globe and give it a shake. Baby would love to. She notices the little family, but the snow globe is too high for her to reach. But then Baby is alone during a snowstorm. Will the snow globe family get a chance to go sledding, too?” While I read, I asked the students to imagine what it would be like if they lived in a snow globe. We also passed around a snow globe I keep in the classroom for students to explore. Many students shared that they have snow globes of their own at home.
An illustration from the book, showing the “big baby” looking in at the small family inside the snow globe
Next, we brainstormed how we might feel, what we might see, and what we might do if we were trapped in a snow globe. You can see below that the ideas were varied and interesting. Then, each child set about writing and drawing to get their own ideas down on a pre-writing page.
Brainstormed ideas
Working on our individual pre-writes
Today, we used our pre-writing activity to create our rough draft. We reviewed how to make sure we have written complete sentences, along with a mini-lesson about avoiding beginning our sentences with the word “and.” We practiced transforming single word ideas into sentences that include details to show our reader what we really mean. Then, the authors were off! Once we got started, the students found that using their pre-write really was helpful in guiding their writing. Since this is only a rough draft, there was no pressure to spell correctly or get everything exactly right. We still did our best, but the goal was to get our ideas onto the page in sentence form. You can see some examples below of pre-writes and their subsequent rough drafts.
Authors at work:
As our writing process continues, we are building our own snowman on our giant bulletin board snow globe! Once the snowman is complete, our very first formal writing following the writing process will be complete, too. Stay tuned to see the final products.
