Expert Books

We just finished up our unit on Expert books (also known as All About or Informational books) and I thought you might love to SEE what they look like!  I was so excited at how engaged the children were....ALL of them....with this writing unit...if you would like a copy of the unit/mini lessons please leave me your email in the comments section and I will send it your way!

The following pages are from the two books pictured above...the students chose a topic they knew a lot about and then wrote several different types of chapters using different formats of writing.  They had to have a persuasive, narrative, and "how-to" in their book.

 I have one student (who normally isn't as excited about writing) that wrote 12 chapters and then asked if he could take home more paper and work on other chapters over our spring break...that is so AWESOME!  Below are my anchor charts if you didn't see them before and again, please let me know if you want a more detailed copy of the unit/mini lessons!  

 After break we are going to work on our editing skills as we think about using writing strategies/conventions in our state test prep packets...I am going to throw in some poetry reading and writing to mix it up a bit!!

Information Books

This week (after studying author's purpose) we began a writing unit known as Informational Writing...also known as All About or Expert Books....the kids are so engaged and excited!! 


We began by making lists/webs of things we know a lot about...

Then we created webs with subtopics...

Then we "tried on" our subtopics or chapters by writing drafts of what would go in those chapters.  We tried "how-to", persuasive paragraphs, and narratives...

Once we felt comfortable that we had chosen the right topic we began our drafting on pages to go in our books.  I am writing my expert book about Training for a Half-Marathon.  My class gets so excited to see the new pages I have completed and in turn take great pride in making their own pages for their books during workshop.  I can't wait to see how their books end up....next week we will continue creating chapters and then they will write an introduction to their topic, create a table of contents, and design a cover.