Writing News

2/16/26

We have finished the hard work of writing personal narratives. The students had great stories to share and spent a great deal of effort digging into those personal narratives and building the details to make their stories engagaging and interesting to their readers. Each part of the writing process, especially the brainstorming was carefully attended to.

Now we begin our informational writing. We will begin by learning note taking on Sled dogs for our unit on Iditarod and then we will research our mushers we are supporting. Afterwards, we will do research on Alaskan animals and create Google Slide Shows to present our information. We expect this to take until right before Spring break.

Informational Writing packages will be sent home soon. Families can choose to do these packages or continue to work on their narrative writing. As long as students are writing rough drafts, editing, and writing final drafts of what they are writing as I am trying to emphasize the writing process at home as well as in class, especially encourage students to add more details to their writing. 

1/30/26

Attached is a link with ideas to help reluctant writers:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iiK9FjrNbLd2UmnKU_VxP5noGhstfDxfYKfbBGSpzQg/edit?usp=sharing

1/17/26  We have started working on personal narratives. We are focusing on the Writing process, specifically brainstorming events, sensory details, introduction, and conclusion before writing the rough draft.  Afterwards, Mrs. Boysen will type up the final draft.  One of the goals is to get students comfortable writing their ideas on their own without parent support and working on making their writing more engaging with adjectives, interesting hooks, and other details.  We will continue to work on the process step by step, identifying what makes a small moment and how to really consider the details that make that moment stand out.

Personal narrative packages were sent home last week in addition to the second set of sentence stretching prompts that parents have really liked. I am asking students to add more sentences to their writing now and not just developing one really good sentence. 

12/4/25 We spent most of this past month working on stretching sentences with the focus on asking questions (who, what, where, when, why), describing things with adjectives, and using our senses to give more details.  We have written a couple of quick stories and done some brainstorming to practice getting our ideas down on paper. We did a short informational piece on the Mayflower for Thanksgiving.

Now we have disguised our Snowmen (dressed them up as something/someone else) and are writing their stories about why they are dressed as they are.  Today we worked on brainstorming and will be trying to work on the writing process as we do the stories. This is in preparation for our personal narratives.

11/13/25 In writing, we have worked on stretching sentences.  First we used questions of who, what, when, where, why to stretch them. We literally practiced making the longest sentences possible after answering these questions. Then we moved on to learning about adjectives (describing words), especially by thinking about our senses. How does something look, taste, smell, feel, and sound? Mrs. Boysen got into a snowball fight over this one!  Focusing on our senses can help us to have good describing words. We are working on adding those adjectives into sentences to expand them. After Thanksgiving, we will be writing an adventure about a disguised snowman.  We will practice the writing process of brainstorming, drafting, revising (adding details), editing, and creating a final piece.  We will do a personal narrative in January to end our narrative unit.

Today I sent home an adjective game for kids to play and practice learning more about adjectives.

10/13/2025  

When Mrs. Bosyen first came to class, we created get to know you butterflies.  Shortly afterwards, we have began a narrative unit.  We have used Mystery Writing to learn about story elements such as character, setting, problem (plot), and resolution. We have also talked about adding adjectives or details to make our stories more interesting.  Recently we wrote about something we are thankful for, specifically targeting brainstorming ideas to help make our final piece. Though this was not narrative writing, it was helpful to learn about brainstorming which is very useful to all kinds of writing.  Next we will continue to work on adding details, specifically studying how to stretch a sentence with those details (adjectives and answering the questions: who, what, when, where, and why.)

New Writing books went home to replace the old. I am asking all students to write at least a polished paragraph weekly.  They can write in their journal or use one of the books I gave them. They do  not need to write in each book. The idea was to provide a tool that might work for them and have one that provides information on narrative writers to help them as teachers become better instructors.  Misspelled words are to become their new spelling words lists.  Students are counseled to write one day without correction and then to add details and improve their piece the next day before writing a final draft. 

Suggested Schedule:  Write one paragraph/story per week.  Please put time into it!

Day 1:  brainstorm ideas and write first draft

Day 2:  add details and develop the paragraph’s ideas more fully.  

Often asking who, what, when, where, and why can help a student stretch 

their sentences and expand their ideas in a story or paragraph.

Day 3:  Create the final piece, including editing for punctuation, grammar, and spelling.

This is a suggested schedule. Sometimes a story needs another day or two, but plan to be writing and editing each writing piece fully and to be writing every day you do at home learning. You can do the finalized writing in a composition book or on a separate piece of paper if you prefer.