Freebie Friday :)

So here it is, Friday the 13th, wooooo.  lol  It just means it's time for another freebie!  My freebie that I have for you today is for Writing Binders.  I do Writing portfolios/binders every year.  I love how it shows the growth of the students throughout the year.  In it, my students have a few guides to serve as reminders of the writing process, a journal for their "sloppy copies" and then their finished pieces.  I TRY to keep the writing in chronological order, but we have a student author book basket in our book nook area where students can put any of their writing that they have published.  I leave it in there for a while and then after a little bit I go through and hole punch and put in binders.  That's why I'm not always sure if it's chronological or not, but it's close enough!  lol  Our reading program has a small writing component with it and I try to follow it a bit.  For the first 6 weeks, the focus is Personal Narratives, then it moves on to How-To Articles, Persuasive Letters, Research Reports (we do animal reports), and Compare/Contrast essays.  These are each in 6 week intervals.  The end of the school year is so crazy I never do the Unit 6 focus.  I don't even know what it is!  lol  So back to the freebie.  This freebie contains the decorative papers I use to split up my students' writing binders.  It has the cover page I put in the clear pocket in the front and then I have dividers that say Personal Narrative, How-To Article, Persuasive Letter, Animal Report, Poetry, Stories, and Extra Work (anything else fun I want to add in).  There is also the resource I keep in each groups Resource Binder, and then a check-off list for each of their writing binders.  I like how they add a nice break to all of the craziness of the kids' writings, and it makes it a little more organized, AND I can see who hasn't finished one of the the writing focuses we've been working on, so I can say, "______ are you still working on your how-to article?"  Use what you'd like, or not.  lol

Writing Binder

And of course this upcoming year I'm going to be adding the "Currently" for each month into the binder too.  You can get that freebie if you haven't from here.  Hopefully my schedule for this year will allow for more time to focus on writing.  

Well today I'm off to Archiver's Scrapmania for my monthly scrap session with a previous co-worker of mine (we used to work at a daycare together and then we worked in the same school until I moved to a different building in the district).  We love the planned time to actually get pages done and it's a fun way to catch up.  Hope everyone else has a fun Friday and not a crazy one!  :)