Writing Frames

I have to admit that I am not the best writer and I have a hard time teaching writing.  I'm always looking for ideas.  We have learned a little bit about Anita Archer.  She does a lot of explicit instruction teaching and has talked a lot about writing frames.  If you haven't watched her, you should check her out.  

She talked some about writing frames and how they are good to use still with kids. Using writing frames with kids seems to actually improve their writing according to what she has researched.  I was excited when I learned about it.  Therefore, I have started using writing frames once a week.  We do the Daily 5, so for most days the kids get to do free writing but one day they do a writing frame.  The writing frame gives them parts of the sentences to write and they complete several of the sentences with their own thoughts.  The kids love doing them and my one kids that have a harder time with writing get so excited to show me what they wrote.  I love using them.  

In reading, we had a story called On My Way to School.  In the story, a boy is late to school because he keeps running into different silly animals.  Our writing frame this week was about our story.  The kids had to come up with their own silly animals.  They did a good job on it.  Here they are:

This one got cut off and says, I see a red crab.

Have a great day!