November Writing

After last week's INSANITY (Halloween, torrential rain = inside recess, power outage, field trip) it was a relief to get back to normal today.  It gave us the first real chance to try out the November writing prompts.  I gathered a bunch of journal ideas from the internet and wrote each one on a leaf.  I put them all in a pumpkin and the kids could pick one if they wanted.

I found leaves and pumpkin at Roberts Craft for 75% off!!  Score!  Writing on the leaves was a bit tricky.  I tried markers first, but they bled too much.  I ended up using my favorite Muji pen and it turned out great.  I imagine any gel pen would work as well.

Here are the prompts I thought would appeal to my 2nd graders.  They're not my original ideas, but I didn't think to pay attention to my sources while I was collecting them.

• Write a letter to a fall tree.  Try to convince the tree not to drop its leaves.
• What will you do during Thanksgiving break?
• Write a recipe for cooking a turkey.
• What if you found a magical pumpkin patch?
• What if Thanksgiving were in the summer?
• If your Thanksgiving turkey burned, what would you eat?
• Imagine you'll turn into a pumpkin at midnight tonight.  Write about all the things you'd like to do before you turn into a pumpkin.
• Once upon a time there was a turkey who never...
• Tell about your favorite thing about autumn.
• Imagine the school voted you principal.  What would you do?  What changes would you make?
• Write about an autumn day.  What would you do?  Tell about the colors, smells, tastes, and sounds.
• Would a turkey make a good pet?  Why or why not?
• If you could have whatever you wanted for Thanksgiving dinner, what would you have?
• Write a story about a squirrel getting ready for winter.

I also got the new lists posted, as well.  This still isn't nearly as popular a choice as journals and letter writing are.  In fact, I think maybe 2 kids chose it all of October.  For now, at least, I'm going to keep offering it.

You can download a copy of the file here.  The clip art is from Lettering Delights.

My goal is to get December's writing taken care of this week.  Maybe I can get on top of this little project!!

Daily 5--Work on Writing

 

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Saturday Story Time--Tomorrow's Alphabet

I was looking through some pictures and came across these that I'd forgotten about. Are you familiar with Tomorrow's Alphabet? It's a pretty clever idea. For each letter of the alphabet, there's an example of what it changes into. Like, "Y is for wool, tomorrow's yarn."



I read it to my class as an introduction to a science unit on change, but there's loads you can do with it. It's great for prediction. There are vocabulary words like ember and bud. You could tie it in with life cycles, producers and consumers, recycling, art...It's a gem of a book! Has anyone else used it?

My one complaint is that the answer for each letter is on the same page. So if you're trying to get students to infer the answer, you have to be careful how you hold the book.



After the story I had my little ones give it a try. They came up with some pretty clever ideas.

It's Summertime...

It's the middle of July! How did that happen? I hope you're enjoying lazy days by the pool, sipping cool drinks, and losing yourself in breezy romance novels.

Yeah. Me neither.

People keep asking me if I'm enjoying my summer and I tell them no. Then I mention something about preparing to transition to the new Common Core as if that would mean anything to non-teachers. But you get it, I'm sure!

Every time I think I'm getting close to being ready for this switch, I realize there's another huge project needing immediate and sustained attention. Granted, I bring a lot of this stress on myself, but I don't know how to be a different kind of teacher! The harsh truth about myself is that if it isn't ready to go on the first day of school, I won't get back to it until next summer.

Last week we had a 2 day training on the new writing core. I left feeling like I need another 2 months of summer to get ready for the fall. On Saturday I was feeling a bit down about the small number of things I've managed to check off my to-do list. I decided to work on something small and accomplishable (that really should be a word!).

Eric, one of our literacy specialists, shared a cute book at the writing training. It's called Happy Birthday to Whooo? Have you seen it? It was new to me. Our training was in the computer lab, so while Eric was giving his presentation, I just ordered myself a copy. I do love Amazon Prime!!


It's by Doris Fisher (her One Odd Day book is a personal favorite). Amazon has a Kindle version as well, so you lucky Smartboard endowed teachers could go that route. In this book, each page is an animal birth announcement that gives clues to help you identify the new arrival.
For example:

We are tickled pink!
Here at last on July 2,
Mr. and Mrs. Ever Glades
welcome their hatchling
that is just a featherweight at 3 1/2 ounces.

Can you guess? When you turn the page, you see the little family and get some additional information about them.

The new writing core has a much stronger emphasis on informational texts than our last curriculum. I'm a little (a lot?) nervous because I've never had great success with having kids do independent research. I'm excited to do this activity because the kids only need to find 2 or 3 facts about baby animals. I think even my strugglers could do this!

The back of the book has a blank birth announcement that students could fill in, but I wanted something easier to copy. So this is what I did on Saturday.


You can download a copy here. It's all gray scale because our only color printer is in the principal's office. Plus, this way the kids can personalize it, right?

I haven't tried this out yet, but the plan is to do something like this:
After helping the kids find their baby animal facts, I would give them a blank paper and a birth announcement. The announcement should be folded on the dotted line. Glue goes only on the back of this folded part. The announcement should be positioned in the middle of the page. Then the students can fill in their facts and draw a picture underneath. Most of the animal should be hidden under the announcement/flap, but they can have a bit of feathers or fur stick out as a clue (like in the book). Once the drawing is done, they can add one more interesting fact that they learned. I think the kids would just be over the moon to get to share their finished work with the class!

Well, there's one thing off the list. Two things if you count blogging about it as another task. And three whole weeks to finish the rest!

Math Monday--Questions

Instead of math journals, in my class I have the students write me "postcards." I tell them that when you're someplace special you send other people postcards to tell them how great it is. Since I can't visit inside their heads, they have to send me a postcard to tell me what's going on.

I write the prompt on the board and answer brief questions about it. Then I hand them all an index card and insist they write for a few minutes. The trick is keeping them all writing for the whole time!

After the timer beeps, they can "mail" me the postcard in a little mailbox I got in the Target Dollar Spot around Valentine's Day last year. Of course every single one of them has to put the flag up!

The best source of math questions that I've found is from the book Good Questions for Math Teaching. The title pretty much says it all. :)


I don't know that it's worth the original $24.95, but Amazon has it for about $13 and I definitely get $13 worth out of it! I like that the questions are open-ended. I like that they challenge my high kids, but are accessible for my strugglers. But most of all, I like that I don't have to think of my own prompts!

For example:

On a graph about pets owned by children in our class, I counted more dogs than cats. What might the graph look like?

Last week I had the kids answer ___ + ___ + ___ = 13 and asked them to find as many numbers as they could that fit the number sentence.


It was a good assessment for me to see which students recognized the different ways to decompose 13, which students could use patterns to build their answers, and which students still had no clue what was going on.

We're linked up at Math Monday.

A Great Website for the New Year

Happy New Year!

Why not kick off the new year with a creative story activity? We are loving the new website Storybird. Their tag line is "Collaborative storytelling for families and friends." Doesn't that sound fantastic? Click here to see a tour of the website. I especially love the art they have available for inspiration!

Found via Tangled and True.

Bare Books

Many young children love writing stories. Long before I could write well, I would staple art paper into little story books that I would write and illustrate. One of my favorite projects in elementary school was writing and editing a special story to put into a "Bare Book." We carefully edited our stories and typed them on the computer. We pasted the words into the books before illustrating them. Then they were put on display in the school library.

I have purchased bare books for my students to use as well. It worked best for us to choose one writing project (such as circle stories) to write in the books. Or you could have them choose their favorite story from writers workshop to edit and publish into a Bare Book at the end of the year.

The great thing about these books is they're affordable at only $1.75. You can buy book jackets to cover them as well, or just color right onto the cover. This would be a great way to encourage your child to write and create at home! I would have loved having some of these around to work on at home.

Confessions of a Frustrated Writing Teacher

When I started teaching, writing was the subject that excited me most. The interest quickly fizzled, however, when I was swamped with trying to manage the process smoothly.

Teaching writing has been a personal battle ever since.

We have parent-teacher conferences this week and in order to get everyone to publish a story, I cut out Author’s Circle from the process. What a difference it has made in my attitude!! I frequently look for excuses to skip writing time, but deleting this step has made it so much easier for me. I see value in Authors Circle (peer edit, conference, whatever you call it), but is it absolutely vital? Can I permanently bag it without damaging them?

(This post was actually written by Heidi but imported by Emily.)

Young Writer's Workshop

Found Via Ohdeedoh

Check out this beautiful writer’s workshop.

Now, it might be more beautiful than it is functional, but I love the idea of it. You can read a description of the different components here.

Do you have a place in your home or your classroom that entices children to come in to write?