By fifth grade, students begin to elaborate on previously learned writing skills. Choosing and narrowing a topic, adding details, and combining sentences are good ideas for mini-lessons on writing strategies. Combining sentences, for example, is one way to improve compositions. Take two similar sentences, add a conjunction between them and create a compound sentence. For the mini-lesson, offer a few examples and do some together as a class. During the writer's workshop, students should review their own writing for places they might be able to combine sentences.
Developing an author's craft includes topics like creating good introductions, using dialogue to add depth, and making descriptive word choices. For instance, since every sentence must have a verb in order to be complete, students often end up using the same words repeatedly. Basic verbs such as "walk," "run," "like," and "say" are common verbs with a tendency of being overused. In a mini-lesson, address these and other "boring" verbs and have students choose more precise, vivid verbs to use instead. For the writer's workshop, give a thesaurus to every student and allow them to find replacements for their word choices.
Figurative language, such as similes, onomatopoeia, and idioms, offers a creative way to add interest to a description or explanation. You can instruct a mini-lesson on similes (comparisons between two unlike things) using the words "like" or "as," and metaphors (comparisons between two unlike things) not using the words "like" or "as" but claiming that one thing is another. Give examples of both, and then show sample sentences in which students should identify the simile or metaphor and explain what two things are being compared. When writing, students should attempt to incorporate at least one simile or metaphor into their work.
Being able to read and edit your own work is a difficult skill, one that even adult writers have trouble mastering. Simplify the process with a mini-lesson that helps students learn to edit specific skills in their writing using highlighters. Each color is for a specific point. For example, highlight spelling mistakes in green, incorrect punctuation in pink, and subject-verb agreement errors in yellow. For that day's writer's workshop, as well as future sessions, use the same color code so that students can visually self-edit their writing, hopefully seeing a decrease in color as the year goes on.