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WritingFix: Tools for a Writing Classroom...Family Writing Projects
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Tools for a Writing Classroom: Family Writing Projects
assigning meaningful writing activities for students and their parents

This project's essential question: How can we better bridge the gap between home and school through meaningful writing assignments that involve students and their families?

Hello, my name is Kim Polson, and I am the WritingFix Coordinator of this new page of lessons and ideas for teachers.  In my fifth-grade classroom, I often require my students to interact with their families as part of writing assignments. I believe some of the best writing my students do is from this type of assignment, and I am confident I am positively affecting my students' relationships with their family members.

Parents should take an interest in their children's school work, and when you assign a meaningful writing assignment that requires families to sit, talk, perhaps even do the writing together, discoveries are made.

On this page at WritingFix, I will be featuring several of my own "Family Writing Projects," and I will be gathering and featuring family writing projects from many of my Northern Nevada teaching colleagues. If you are interested in proposing your own "Families Write" lesson to be posted here, please take a look at our Proposal Form. We'll send you a free classroom resource, if your proposal is accepted.

Family Writing Project #1:
A Personal Timeline
from Nevada teacher Kim Polson

Project overview: The students will create personal timelines representing key events that have happened in their lives. Together, with their parents, they will have a chance to recount the important life-shaping memories of their past and present. The students will focus on writing the MOST IMPORTANT details of each event in a timeline format.

6-Trait Focus: Idea Development and Word Choice

Click here to access the lesson and its resources on-line.
Family Writing Project #2:
Weekly School/Home Letters
from Nevada teacher Kim Polson

Project overview: This project fosters written communication between students and family members while addressing topics that impact the students’ daily lies. Teachers will address a topic of interest with students (current events, life issues, read alouds, etc.) which the students will then write a letter to their parents about. Weekly, the students will take these letters home and have their parents write a written response. Both letters will then come back to school, be placed in the student’s portfolio, and saved until the end of the year.

6-Trait Focus: Idea Development and Voice

Click here to access the lesson and its resources on-line.
Family Writing Project #3:
Family Apology Poems
from Nevada teacher Kim Polson

Project overview: Based on the poetry collection, This is Just to Say..., written by Joyce Sidman, the student will write a poem of apology to his/her parent. As showcased in Sidman's collection, the student poems may be sincere or their sincerity might be in question, as it certainly is in the original William Carlos Williams poem, "This is Just to Say." The parent, in turn, will write a response poem back to the student. This Family Writing Project was adapted from the Poems of Apology Lesson created by Northern Nevada teacher Todd Herman for the WritingFix website.

6-Trait Focus: Word Choice and Voice

Click here to access the lesson and its resources on-line.

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