Thomas Nickerson 4th Grade Community Building Small Group: September Teacher Toolkit

In this video, Thomas Nickerson, 4th grade teacher in Massachusetts, teaches a small group on using a community-building map to generate story ideas from The Reading & Writing Project at Mossflower's Supporting All Writers book. While these lessons are found in Supporting All Writers 3-5, they could truly be done in any grade level.
Here, students generate story or topic ideas by honing in on who they are. They think of specific times in their lives and/or create community-building maps in order to generate story or topic book ideas. Writing about what you know naturally motivates students, but also serves as a deliberate message that all students have stories to tell and knowledge to share.
To learn more about the Units of Study in Writing Grades 3-5, visit here: mossflower.com....