Again, writing occurs in all aspects of the curriculum. "Writing" in Language Arts program looks at writers' craft: planning, developing and publishing pieces of personal, creative writing. I have many goals for my students this year, but the most important is for students to enjoy writing. There will be three main ways students will write in Language Arts:

1. Independent personal writing opportunities. These are regular writing classes where students work on topics they select. This often occurs during the writing workshops.
2. Research. Students will write within the context of a subject such as Social Studies or Science where they will explore a topic through an inquiry process.
3. Guided writing. When students collaboratively work on a specific area of writing. Here, students learn about the conventions of the English language and learn how to communicate ideas effectively. Taking notes during a class lesson would be another example of this type of writing. This occurs throughout the day, but often occurs during the writing workshops.

The expectations described above happen in my classroom in many ways. The following are my own expectations for students:

As writers, Students write daily in class and at home. They maintain Writers' Journals where they write and organise materials for their writing. As much as possible, students choose topics that are important to them and explore their thoughts and feelings about those topics. They explore various forms to express their ideas, thoughts and feelings. They should be able to discover how writing can be used for different purposes. Students need to see writing in all aspects of the curriculum not just during Language Arts. Students need to be able to draft, revise, edit (abandon if necessary) and publish their work. As effective writers Students need lots of time to learn about writing by exploring writing by authors and by each other. Students need time to learn how to revise their work and "see their pieces with new eyes". Students need time to learn how to edit their work carefully. Students need time to see how sentences, words and punctuation work and then try their discoveries out in their own writing. Students need to learn how to conference with other writers to improve their writing. Students need to be able to share confidently. Students need to keep an audience in mind when writing. Students need to be able to use computer technology effectively for publishing their work.

In my program, I use these three opportunities for writing to explore the grade 4 and 5 curriculum.

As writers, they need to be able to produce pieces of writing using a variety of forms, narrative techniques, and materials from other media communicate ideas and information for a variety of purposes and to specific audiences use writing for various purposes and in a range of contexts, including school work organize information to convey a central idea, using well-developed paragraphs that focus on a main idea and give some relevant supporting details produce media texts using writing and materials from other media As effective writers they need to be able to: use simple, compound, and complex sentences revise and edit their work, seeking feedback from others and focusing on content, organization, and appropriateness of vocabulary for audience proofread and correct their final drafts, focusing on grammar, punctuation, and spelling use and spell correctly the vocabulary appropriate for this grade level use correctly the conventions specified for this grade