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Welcome Visitors! This blog shows a Grade 4 Blogging Unit of Study. It was created to serve as a teaching tool for our students as well as a way for two teacher-researchers to record this very new kind of Writing Unit. The creators of this blog, two NJ teachers (one classroom teacher and one Literacy Coach), believe very strongly in teaching students about all genres of writing and believe that digital writing has a place in elementary school classrooms. We are teaching fourth graders how to read and write blogs because we think it will be a genre that they can use to write about what they are passionate about in the world. We welcome any comments and feedback on our lessons and also hope that we will soon have some very well written and thoughtful student blogs to share. Furthermore, as one of the outcomes of this unit, we hope our students will see themselves as writers who are able to produce writing that they feel proud of to put out there in the digital world for all to read and comment on.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Revising Blog Posts Part 3

Mrs. Pintarelli used Lucy Calkins' ideas from Breathing Life into Essays to suggest using transition words to push your thinking forward. By modeling pushing your thinking forward, Mrs. Pintarelli showed students one more way they can revise their blog posts. Using transition words to push thinking forward, allows a writer to more deeply express their thinking and leads his/her reader to their "big ideas" they have about the world. One of the most powerful things this unit has taught me, is the ablity these fourth graders have in thinking profound thoughts about the world in which they live.

Mrs. Pintarelli charted the transition words as Calkins suggests.


Then, Mrs. Pintarelli modeled the strategy with a post she wrote about homework.




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1 comment:

  1. monicabaMarch 30, 2011 at 6:48 PM

    Thanks for sharing such a great list of words to help students push their thinking forward. Once they are able to internalize these words, their thinking and writing can flow with ease. I will use this lit in my instruction.

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