Their Name on the Board

I wholeheartedly believe this comment by Lucy Calkins... 

"When a school system recognizes that writing is a crucial tool for learning to read and to think across every subject area, then time for writing becomes non-negotiable."

Writer's Workshop is a must-have in my room, but it's possibly one of the most rewarding and hardest parts of my job all at the same time.  There are days when it's not easy to manage 25 writers who need 25 different kinds of support, but I can't imagine life without it.  Yet there are times when it's nice to have a little something extra to motivate and inspire more kids to either stay on-task or try a certain strategy.

Sometimes after a mini-lesson I'll draw something specific on the board and invite writers to sign their name to it at any point during their writing time if they try the strategy that the mini-lesson highlighted.  For example, when we were learning how to revise leads, I drew a big L on the board.  Writers who worked on their leads wrote their names inside the L.  

This picture is from a lesson about using ellipses like one of our writing mentors did.  Kids who tried them out signed their name.

We've talked a lot about the use of dialogue, so writers who tried out this strategy signed the quotation marks.

When learning the difference between list language and story language, I wrote some words on the board that we talked about during our mini-lesson that might help their writing sound less like lists and more like stories.  Whoever tried one of the words signed the box.


I don't do this consistently because it's not necessary, but there are days when it's a helpful strategy to have around.  What kid doesn't love to write their name on the board?