Writing Workshop Craft Lesson on Feelings

Good writers tell the reader how they are feeling!

I started a new author study on Nancy Carlson.  Her books  make great lessons for teaching writing and reading comprehension.  Her stories are loaded with voice and themes that young children can relate to. I read to the class Henry's Show and Tell. 

For the first lesson in this book we talked about what we notice, she does in this book to make it a good book. A little boy quickly said she writes feeling words and feelings pictures. You can see below some of the steps we took with this mini-lesson and some examples of student work.

The group knew why this was strong writing. 

I think the most important part of this lesson was to say that today at writing try to put your feelings in your story because that's what good/strong writers do. 

We are having fun, and we are happy 

T: Tell me what you were doing with your friends that made you feel that way? Melissa is a child who just started writing independently, so I am not going to push her with having to add more but I am planting a seed

When I was a baby, I was a happy baby. 

T: Why do you think you were a happy baby? You need to go home and ask your mom what did I do  when I was a baby? Did you smile a lot? Did you make funny sounds?

I was angry it was time to go home, I did not want to go home

T: When this child first shared she did not have the first sentence.    After she had shared her writing with the group, she added her feelings.

I felt sad I did not want to eat lobster.

This child forgot what she wrote, but if you look at her illustration she is capturing her feelings quite nicely.When she did read it to the class she said something like, " I was playing with my friends and feeling happy."

 T: This is a child who just started writing independently, so I think it is great that she did all this writing.  Her illustration is perfect, and it is appropriate that rereading would be difficult for her at this time. 

We made this feelings chart. Next lesson, when I see another child uses the word HAPPY I will encourage them to find a different word that means happy on the feelings chart.