Writing Workshop Week 1 - Sentences

(Check out my Fifth Grade Grammar Ideas pinterest board for great ideas on how to teach/review sentence structure)

We made it through the first week of school.  I'm not sure who was more excited for the weekend - me or my students LOL.  We had a great week, I have a fabulous class, but my 'summer bedtime' is not working with my 'back to school' wake up time.  Got to get adjusted to falling asleep before 11 pm.  I need my 8 hours if you know what I mean.

Anyway, on to Workshop Week 1.  We spent this week talking about 'What is a Workshop?'  We compared our classroom workshops to a Home Depot 'kid's project day' workshop, a Build A Bear workshop, a dance or sports workshop, and even a sports practice.  This discussion helped the students to understand the workshop format - 

1. Quick warm-up (to stretch our brains like you stretch your muscles before football practice) 
2. Quick mini-lesson on what we will learn to do (similar to a huddle with the coach/or directions from a Home Depot worker or Build A Bear worker on how to complete the project)
3. Lots of time to work/practice what we are learning (comparable to the time you get to make the bear or build the birdhouse or learn the new play)
4. Quick recap (like the end of practice huddle to discuss how the new play went, or the time at the end of the Home Depot workshop to ask questions and talk about how you can finish the project at home)

This discussion will set the tone for our reading, writing and math workshops.

Writing Workshop Week 1 - Sentences (Yes I teach fifth grade but I've found I need to review sentences the first week of school so I can expect them (no excuses) the rest of the year!)

This week our mini-lessons during writing worskhop will focus on sentences (What is a complete sentence? What is a fragment? What is a subject? What is a predicate? How do I add details to sentences? and What are run on sentences? (a quick review of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc will happen within these lessons as well). I hope to post anchor charts next weekend. But for now, check out my Fifth Grade Grammar Ideas pinterest board to see all of the lessons, power points, SMARTboard files, and activities I pinned to teach these topics this week.  I can't wait to get started!  Who ever thought reviewing sentence structure could be fun????  Enjoy!!!