Lesson Author: Sharon Hall

School Affiliation: South Lebanon Elementary School, Maineville, OH

Subject: Language Arts

Grade Level: 2

Overview: Students will write, edit, and compose a monthly classroom magazine.

Rationale: Students will develop and enhance their writing and editing skills through writing that is meaningful and interesting to them. They will share this writing with others in their school so that they can enjoy the rewards of others reading their work.

Learning Objectives:

• learn editing skills
  
  
• develop and enhance writing skills
  
  
• improve grammar skills by making interesting word choices and editing writing for punctuation errors
  
  
• learn how to develop topics into information that is suitable for writing short magazine articles
  
  
• learn the process of creating a magazine
  
  
• become familiar with different components of magazines

Materials:

• an assortment of children's magazines
  
  
• computers with internet capabilities and word processing software
  
  
• digital camera
  
  
• paper, pencil

Procedure:

Choose a different feature of each magazine for mini-lessons during writer’s workshop. Possible mini-lessons: sequencing articles, choosing topics, stages of the writing process, punctuation, showing voice in writing, using interesting words to improve writing, how to research information.

Set up a monthly calendar with deadlines for creating the magazine. At the beginning of each month students can sign up for their assignment for the month. Possible assignments: editor, cartoonist, teacher feature, sports, classroom news, local news, word search creator, character trait of the month, school news, principal’s corner, mystery teacher, photographer/caption writer.

Allow 2 weeks from time of sign-up until students must have piece ready for editing. When students have written their article they will take it to a student editor who will help with corrections such as better word choices, proper punctuation, and spelling changes.

Allow one week for editing and one week for publishing. Each student will type written articles using word processing software.

When finished, teacher will put the articles together into a magazine format to be printed and shared with students and families.

Extension/Enrichment: Closure (evaluation): Read classroom magazine together each month and discuss. Generate a list of things that were good as well as a list of improvements the class would like to see. Create a survey for other students concerning what they would like to see in the magazine.

Assessment:

Guided Practice (Assessment): As students complete their assignment for the month, it will be shared with the teacher and the group for input. Use "stars and wishes" handout for evaluation. On the stars portion, each class member will respond with positive points of the student’s work (this portion is longer than the wishes portion). Under the wishes portion, students respond with "I wish that you had. . ..” This will give each student feedback on his or her work that is positive as well as an opportunity to improve based on the response from their classmates.

Independent Practice (Assessment/Evaluation): Rubrics should be created that include points for participation, grammar, use of language, completing assignments on time, and overall effectiveness of work. Each contribution to the magazine will be worth a possible 50 points.