Writing Workshop Post-It Goals

What are we working on as writers? 

Here is a great template my first and second-grade teachers are using in their writing workshop folders. They learned about this idea after attending a Units of Study workshop. During the writing conference, the teacher will often look at the child's writing and give the child one teaching tip. At the end of the conference, the teacher  gives a post-it reminder of what they worked on together. 

For example on the conference sheet below, on one of the conference days, the child struggled with coming up with a topic to write about. 

The teacher created the Post-It goal by helping the child list some story ideas.  The conference sheet is then  placed in a transparent plastic sheet in the child's writing folder. It can easily slide in and out. You can download the conference sheet here. 

If you are new to conferring, you could create a ring of 

Post-its goals with some possible teaching points on the backside. 

I like to think of this as a teacher cheat sheet. 

    Here are some example of goals on Post-Its.

Writers match the pictures and the words.

Each page of your story has a part that connects. 

At the start of writing time, writers reread their work touching each word as they read it. For beginning writers, they should be rereading their sentence every time they add a word. 

Read your story to your writing partner. Does your story make sense? Are any parts confusing? Go back and add to your story. 

Make sure your characters are wearing clothes! 

If the story takes place over the course of a day, does your character have the same outfit on? 

Say your sentence you plan to write aloud. Tap a finger for each word.  

S-T-R-E-C-H out all of the sounds you hear in the word. 

Joyfully yours in creating goals and enjoying stories, 
Melissa

Sources for this blog post:

Units of Study Lucy Calkins
              Talking, Drawing and Writing by Martha Horn and Maryellen Giocobbe