Much to my surprise and pleasure all heads remain bowed, pencils moved throughout the five minutes and an awesome silence and stillness surrounded the room only to be broken by groans and moans when the timer rang. My goal in the next step is to encourage the students to write more at a later date by responding to their written work as they read it aloud to the class. I wonder what his home looks like. Invariably every child skims over their work checking for correct verb tense, some erasing and replacing, some placing a question mark to check later. My philosophy is, published work is perfection.
Students publish one article a week from their journals.
Each day I lead a Writer's Response Camp with four children bringing their journals and pencils. I begin the group by explaining one rule of grammar, one concept of writing and reading and ask children to check their papers for these rules and ideas. Students and teacher read their favorite response to the group with the group responding with one thing they liked and one thing they wonder. Children then exchange papers for editing of punctuation, spelling, and complete sentences. After peer editing, children move to Writer's Corner to complete their first draft of edited work, placing work in the Homework Box for me to edit later in the day.