It's "All About" Non-Fiction Writing

We finally finished our "All About" animal information books.  These babies are AH-MAZING!  I have blogged before about my very mixed feelings about Writing Workshop since we use the Lucy Calkins Units of Study.  I think there are many useful structures and ideas, but many of the Lucy lessons are completely over the kids heads.  Plus I don't think there is enough modeling or shared writing involved.

Then I found my personal writing guru... Susan Moran at T.G.I.F.  I have purchased many of her writing units, and this unit is BY FAR my absolute new favorite!!!  She has a fantastic way of guiding students through the process step-by-step.  The results are confident, engaged, and motivated writers in my classroom.  WIN!

Find it {HERE}


WARNING:  Photo bomb blog post ahead...


Our first day on the job... researching many different kinds of animals.  From there, we narrowed it down to three choices of animals we would like to write about.  I put the students in groups based on their interest.



Here we are writing down our Fascinating Facts.  They were so engaged in the research we ended up doing this for three straight days!




Our coveted Cover Page.  These look AWESOME!



Here are our Diagrams.  I was impressed with what body parts the kids chose to label.  There were some GREAT vocabulary words in there!



Here we are working on our Different Kinds page.  Our Library Media Specialist helped the students to find pictures of different kinds of our animals.



Here we are working on our Introduction page.  Our goal was to tell what kind of animal we were writing about (i.e. mammal, reptile, insect, etc.) and give a physical description of our animals.




Here are some of our GORGEOUS covers!  I don't think my class has worked this hard to make something look this pretty all year!








Here we are sharing our success with our third grade buddies.  We are SO PROUD!!!



Here is an example of a final product in its entirety.












This was such a wonderful writing piece to end our year with.  I can't wait for this unit again next year!

7 comments

  1. Colleen!!!

    I am SO impressed by your kids work it is insane!! I love their books and I am so happy you liked the unit!!

    Thank you for the shout out and I know your kids will cherish that book for years to come!

    Have a great weekend :)

    Susan

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! You made it so easy for me to guide them through a writing unit that they LOVED!
      Colleen :-)

      Delete
  2. We just finished our nonfiction books too. I don't have this unit but it looks a lot like the work I follow from a book called, Primarily Writing. My kids loved our research unit too! Your kids' work is great!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Could you send me the printable version of your research paper? That would be easy to adapt to different levels in our homeschool setting! Thanks
    tibb000@yahoo.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. Did you let them research and write down their interesting facts about all 3 animals to determine which animal they wanted?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nope! I keep it really simple in the beginning. On the first day all I had them do was to visit each table and read through the books. Then they chose what animal they wanted to research and started coming up with their facts. Colleen :-)

      Delete

Back to Top