My Third-Grade Writing Group

Today was the second day of my third-grade writing group. I have three girls in the group. Last time we met, they selected a picture to write about from a box of picture prompt cards and wrote about a half page each. They picked Artist, Beach and Bicycle. These cards have vocabulary on the back that gives them ideas to include in their papers. Each one of these girls wrote a different type of paper. The girl who chose Bicycle is writing a fictional story about an "alive" bicycle. The girl who chose Beach wrote about how excited she is about going to the beach and all the things she's going to do there. The girl who picked Artist told about all the people who can be called artists. So, we have three types of writing represented here: informative, personal narrative and fiction. I am thrilled that they are so motivated. All these experiences will help them develop their thinking and their writing, and for their age and grade level, they are already showing amazing potential. The first time we met, they picked a prompt and started writing. Today, they shared with each other what they had written, we talked about editing and revising and how we were going to rewrite what we did last week and we talked about how each had written a different type of document. This group meets twice a week. Three times a week a group of four girls form a reading group. Two of them are also in my writing group. We are reading King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry. They are loving it. This is a book I devoured as a child and recently read again. I love sharing it with these girls. The book is a bit challenging for the girls but they are very eager to learn new words, they love reading aloud, and are becoming more and more fluent in their reading every day. Nobody complains about the book being too hard or boring or anything like that. They are super engaged in the story, so interested in what is going to happen next, and it's an utter joy to work with them. Something I'm reminded of every day is the fact that I met a best friend in the third grade, and we are still dear friends. Third grade girls are very perceptive, very bright, very talented and, I am convinced, deserve to be challenged and encouraged, and I feel so privileged and blessed to be able to share these things with these girls. It will be so much fun to see how they proceed with these first and future papers. Kids have so many ideas and such wonderful imaginations, and I want to help them as much as I can to develop their minds and their skills and give them learning experiences that will last a lifetime.