A few weeks ago, I wrote about the celebrations in a third grade classroom I get to work in. It’s a class that didn’t arrive from second grade believing that they were writers. I’ll be honest, when I first started working with the classroom teacher, I didn’t have a clear vision for how we would fix things. I wasn’t even sure we could.

Today, I arrived for writing and the class was still fully immersed in math. “We just need a few more minutes,” the teacher called to me. “The writing lesson today is a lot.”

I grabbed her unit and scanned the lesson. “I can do it,” I said as she scanned a math workbook. The teacher is new to third grade and we’ve taken a real team teaching approach to our work together.

When math time was officially over, the students gathered on the rug in front of the easel. Our mission today was trying on different text structures for the informational books they were planning. Lofty for sure! As we explored different text structures, we worked to find a chapter from our class book “All About Third Grade” that would work with each structure. The kids seemed to be getting it!

Before sending the kids off to work on their own, I reviewed the steps, jotting them down on a post-it as I went. “First you’ll choose a chapter from your table of contents. Then you’ll think about what text structure might fit. You might try compare and contrast or pros and cons.” At that moment, Jazz, a little guy who has needed a lot of support during writing time, looking right at me. “Like Jazz,” I continued, racking my brain for his topic. “You’re writing about camping, right?” He nodded, a small grin forming on his face. “You might write a pro and con chapter about sleeping in a tent!” I hoped this would be enough to get him going.

As the kids set off to work, the classroom teacher and I got busy, working with individuals and small groups. The room was lost in their work. I never even checked back in with Jazz and I may have even missed this moment had his teacher not called to me from across the room. “We have to share in about four minutes Ms. Carey,” she said looking up at the clock.

That’s when my eyes saw Jazz, busy working at his desk. He looked up and caught me looking at him. “Did you get started writing all by yourself?” I asked him.

I wish I had my camera to capture the smile on his face as he held up his notebook, a neatly outlined pro and con list written across his page.

Things got busy after that. We shared. We celebrated trying hard things. The class went to lunch and I went back to my office. A few minutes later, the teacher popped her head in. “As we were walking to lunch, I heard the kids talking about how they love writing. And not just one or two…a bunch.”

Her smile matched Jazz’s from earlier.

We’re growing writers.