Today is an early release day in my district so it is a shortened class period. I will take advantage of this shortened class period with a writer's workshop day.
To begin class, I will distribute the questions from the closure of yesterday's lesson. I distribute them randomly so students are answering one of their peer's questions. I tell students to spend a few minutes answering the questions. After three or four minutes, I will open the class for discussion of the questions. I will call on random students to read the questions and their answers. This will help us review the poet's structure. I will ask students to think about structure and word choice when working on their own poems today.
I hand out the template which is downloaded from the Scholastic website. Students have ten minutes to work on completing their template. During this time, I turn on soft music, tell the students it should be absolutely quiet and I leave them alone. While they are writing, I am doing the same. I sit near them, completing my own template. I want them to see me writing and modeling the writing process. Here is a student example of template.
After students complete the template, I will ask them to work on writing their rough draft. This video, Writer's workshop (W.9-10.4, W.9-10.5) explains what this time looks like in my classroom and what I do while students are writing. Because it is near the end of the year, students know the expectations of writer's workshop and I don't anticipate there being many behavior issues.
To end class today, I will inform students that during our next time together, we will be doing a collaborative revision. They need to come into class with their rough draft completed.