Ch. 5 Do More Shared Writing

Well I'm excited. I finished Chapter 5 last night, took a few notes, and decided to give an example of shared writing today in class. I already planned a lesson, so it was easy to adapt today.
It went well. The students responded to what they felt made great stories. (topic, supporting details, make a plan, emotions, element of surprise, an ending that makes the reader want to know more etc...)
Next we discussed writing a story with exactly 100 words to celebrate the 100th day of school. They brainstormed writing clues to add or delete words to their story. (contractions, compound words, split words, figurative language, speaking parts, conjunctions etc...)
I modeled a story I wrote with exactly 100 words and shared the techniques I used. We began with a thinking moment, then shared, and finally began writing. They were put in cooperative groups and we practiced a circle editing with the group. When they received their writing back they corrected as needed and published the final story.
I understand shared writing is teacher directed - student response, but I felt like the writing activity above was very teacher directed yet actively involved the students with constant brainstorming and sharing before they began independent writing.
I appreciate the many ideas for classroom charts and shared writing examples that were presented in this chapter.
I think it would be interesting to complete a shared writing about concerns in the US and develop a class letter to send to president Bush for President's Day.