Writing Choice Menus

I think the smoothest, easiest part of my day is the 90 minutes I do small group reading.  You can read about my original blog post about that here.  One of the aspects I mention in that post is the writing journals I use daily with my students.   I LOVE these writing choice menus!

My students have a timer that helps them monitor themselves as they complete their center routine (while I'm meeting with small reading groups).  One piece of this routine is that they write for (at least) 10 minutes.  The writing menu gives them lots of options and they get to CHOOSE which topic they write about each day.  Whenever students have an appropriate amount of choice, they are motivated.  They also can choose to write about something that's not on the menu, but 99% percent of the time, my students prefer to pick a topic from the menu.  

The choices are numbered so that they can write down the number on their journal page.  This helps both of us when we conference.  (Sometimes that invented spelling in first grade can be hard to decipher:)  Each prompt has a picture to help cue those emergent readers.  The students just cross out the prompt they chose each day.

I've always done journaling with my students and this is by far my favorite way.  They never run out of things to write about and they are very motivated to write each day.  I love the informality of journal writing.  I feel like I get to know my students through what they choose to share in their writing.  Analyzing their journal writing allows me to see what conventions and skills they are secure with and the areas that I need to give more instruction, modeling, and practice with.  These strengths and weaknesses seem to be much more apparent in journal writing than the more formal writing we do with opinion, informative, and narrative pieces.  I typically provide more support and modeling in these pieces than the journal writing.  

If you are interested in using these writing choice menus in your classroom,  you can stop by my TPT store.  They are so adaptable to many literacy routines like the Daily 5 or whatever way you get your little ones writing each day!  I hope you find them a good addition to your classroom!