Caldwell Middle School Author Residency Day 4 – Thursday, January 10, 2013

 

Friends:

 

Today was Day 4 of my 5 day writing residency at Caldwell Middle School through a grant administered by Story Tapestries and the Houma Regional Arts Council. Today, the students focused on finishing their stories if they hadn’t already and writing their final drafts. They did superb work and I was ecstatic to receive stacks of awesome stories!

 

 

I reinforced what we had already learned this week, going over the six step writing process of brainstorming, researching, outlining, drafting, editing, and proofing. We also went over the criteria I was looking for in each story:

 

* A beginning, a middle, and an end
 
* Interesting characters
* Dialogue
* A jazzy title
* Conflict and resolution.

 

The students worked diligently on their stories.

 

 

I was excited to see students doing research by using the dictionary and thesaurus.

 

 

Some of the students finished their final draft and created illustrations to accompany their story.

 

 

It has been a most rewarding week at Caldwell Middle School! Ms. Funguy, one of the fourth grade teachers, told me, “Because of you, I think my students test scores in writing will improve.” For me, that is the greatest compliment ever.

 

 

The icing on the cake of my day was visiting Ms. D’s resource classroom. She was using tangrams from the professional development workshop I taught on Tuesday!

 

 

Using a page from my book, Tangram Tales, The students assembled tangrams using the diagrams as a guide. Fabulous!

 

 

I am so looking forward to my culminating day at Caldwell! The students will find out whose story was published on my website. However, I want to point out that every one of the fourth graders at Caldwell Middle School is a winner! They worked so hard this week, achieved so much in a short period of time, and really worked as teams. Good job, boys and girls!

 

Until next time…

 

Warmly, Dianne