Unforgivable Words

I have to say that I love teaching writing and my kiddos tend do very well with writing.  I usually teach from Lucy Calkin's Units of Writing which I LOVE but had to buy myself.  My school uses a few different programs but I was introduced to Lucy Calkins during student teaching and have had such great results. Since we don't have a program we HAVE to use, I just bought the set and I use it a lot.  It was definitely worth the money. If you are looking for a writing program I would highly recommend it.

Well, usually I use Lucy but occasionally I switch it up and today was one of those days.  We created a chart from Scholastic's 201 Teacher-Created Charts.  This book is like a primitive form of pinterest.  It's just full of pictures of charts that other teachers have created.  I think I bought this from Barnes and Noble for like $10.00 and it is full of great anchor charts.

We haven't been too worried about spelling during writing up until now but because Lucy starts out with just encouraging the students to write, write and write some more.  I want them to be comfortable to just get anything and everything down on paper before I start editing and changing it. I explained today that we needed to start checking our work for correct spelling.

Well I introduced this with the Unforgivable chart. We brainstormed words that were "unforgivable" to spell wrong in our writing. We started with very easy words and I tried to stay away from CVC words because that would be really long list. As soon as they came up with cat they tried to write EVERY word that rhymed with cat so I said no more CVC words.  I told my kids to stick with sight words that they use almost every time they write.  This is what they came up with first. We will keep adding to the chart over the next few days and then I will create a chart for them to keep in their student offices.  I will post some more pictures as we add more.  I am excited that it's already Wednesday and we have a field trip tomorrow, yeah!