Title – Writers Always Do Their Best

By – Beth Cornell

Primary Subject – Language Arts

Grade Level – K

Writer’s Workshop Theme:

All writers can draw their best.

Time of Year: Launch of Writing Workshop

Background: Many writers in early grades are insecure about their drawing ability. Early writers draw their stories therefore it is important to acknowledge feelings of insecurity and quickly empower all writers to “Do Their Best Work”.

Materials: Whiteboard, markers, paper, pencils and

Ish

by Peter H. Reynolds

Steps:

1. With children assembled on the rug, begin asking the children some questions about writing.

a. What does a writer do?

b. Is there a way to tell a story without written words?

c. A picture can tell a story right?

2. I begin to tell a story about my morning. As I tell the story, I draw the story on the white board:


This morning my daughter, Gillian, woke up crying and crying. I jumped straight up out of bed and wasn’t sure where I was.

(I must have been sleeping so soundly!)

I looked at the clock and it was 2 a.m.! I just couldn’t believe it. So I stumbled into Gillie’s room and she was crying and throwing all of her “gugs” out of the crib. Stop… I am not really sure how to draw a “gug,” but I am going to do my best. That doesn’t really look like a “gug” but it is “gug-ish.” You know what, that doesn’t really look like my alarm clock but it is “alarm clock-ish”. I bet you are wondering where I got that word “ish”. Well I used to take a long time to draw and erase my drawings because I wanted my drawings to look exactly like what I was drawing, but then I realized that I was thinking too much about a part of the picture and I wasn’t thinking about my story.

/stop, repeat/

Then I read the story

Ish

by Peter H. Reynolds. I am going to share that great book with you all now.

3. Read

Ish

by Peter H. Reynolds.

4. Discuss the boy from the story and his feelings and how his sister found his drawings to be “ish”.

5. Have class make a promise to always do their “best job”.

6. Ever since I read that story, I have felt better about everything I draw. Now I don’t ever use my eraser. In our class we do not need erasers because everything we draw can be “ish”. We are proud of our work and our stories. When we share our stories we will always tell each other “Good job”.

7. Ask class to call out things for me to draw on the whiteboard. After each one we will say that does not look exactly like a ________ but it does look ____-ish. Class will say “Good job” after each one.

8. Students will go off to write about (draw) a story that happened to them. Everyone gets a blank paper with no lines and a pencil with no eraser.

9. Remind them that they will just do their best.

10. I walk around to have mini-conferences with everyone to hear their stories in a whisper.

11. 15 minutes into the lesson we share the work on the rug.

/Good job!/


12. Children who did not get the chance to finish drawing their story can revisit this piece the next day.

In my classroom we use the “ish” term all year.

E-Mail

Beth Cornell

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