Kids Talk about their Own Writing Progress: Kathy Solimeo, Third Grade, Late Fall 2011

Our class read the book Fortunately and then created our own book modeled after it. This book was read in Being a Writer™ Unit 1, Week 4, "Getting Ideas from Pattern Books." The students were to listen to and discuss a text that uses patterns. In this case it was the repeated words "Fortunately, Unfortunately". My class loved this book and I read it several times to them. Our classroom book modeled after this now resides in our classroom library and children read it every day! I think this is their favorite book so far.

• Khavie—"I used to write in all capital letters now I don't."
• Emily—"I am writing longer this year than ever before"
• Issac and Gianna—"This book was funny! Did you know that people get ideas from other people's writing? Drawing helped us get our ideas across."
• Damon—"We read the story and make our own paper. We never wrote anything like this based on a story we read."
• Gabriel—"We thought the story was cool and we wanted to make our own ideas. Some words were repeated, words followed a pattern and we copied that pattern."
• Dennis—"I am writing longer sentences."
• Maliyah—"My work is neater."
• Marcos—"I am writing longer paragraphs. I am reading stories to explain what we'll be writing about. Mrs. Solimeo is giving us good examples of good writing."
• Caniya—"I am writing faster and more sentences.
• Tom—"Our book took a lot of hard work."
• Anila—"I can now spell difficult words and use a dictionary and a thesaurus."
• Kayla—I use more interesting words now."
• Owimani—"I want to write more!"
• Shanirya—"I am replacing baby words with adult words and I remember to indent now."