Mothers' Day Card & Art

We worked hard on writing a poem and creating flower art for our moms this week. My students loved making the personalized flowers for their moms in this project!

Oogly - Clay Monster Creations

Each year, the Oogly Lady comes to visit our school. She is a wonderful artist who brings such unique creations from my students! I love to see what they make.

The students start with a ball of clay and create a pinch pot. This pinch pot becomes the mouth & body of their Oogly monster. Next, a nose and eyes are added. With a little bit of rolled clay, the monster has legs and arms. My students get very into the details of their monsters, adding teeth, hair, a spiky tail, etc.

The Oogly Lady takes our monsters with her to fire them in the kiln. Meanwhile, we write a fictional fantasy story about the creatures. The Ooglies are a prized possession and are kept for many, many years!

Technical Writing: How To Build A Snowman

Each year, as we are anticipating the arrival of our snowstorm(s), we write a technical piece How To Build A Snowman. We focus on writing sequential paragraphs instead of 1., 2., 3., etc. steps. We discussed all the sequence and transition words they would be able to use in their writing. Then we drafted!

As they edited with a partner, each student read their directions aloud. Their partner used a whiteboard to draw the directions they were hearing. This really helped the students understand what they were missing from their directions. There were many drawing with three snowballs side by side because the author forgot to include the stacking step :)

After final drafts were written, students decorated their own snowman to 'hold' their writing. These snowmen looked more festive than the ones we have made in the past.

 

Winter Door Decorations

Our classroom door needed a little pizazz when coming back from Winter Break. I found a resource through Pinterest from The Sharpened Pencil and couldn't wait to get it into my kiddo's hands! I asked them to write about what they most enjoy about winter.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Research & Mini-Book

As soon as we came back from Winter Break, we started our Martin Luther King, Jr. research. In the past, our students have written a mini research paper. This year, we jazzed up our activity by using Blair Turner's MLK Mini Book (freebie on TpT). The students filled out all kinds of information about MLK and decorated the books. I am holding on to these books to show off at parent-teacher conferences!

More resources:

• Clip of MLK's speech - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDsUYTgkDSU&feature=related&noredirect=1
• Animated story of MLK's life - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Au81aHuSg&noredirect=1

Santa's Stuck - Let's Help!

Last week, we wrote our rough drafts of Santa's Stuck. We read (most of) Santa's Stuck and each student came up with their own ending as if Santa were stuck at their house.

After the students had their basic idea down, I wrote my own rough draft (I didn't want anyone stealing my idea!). Then, we worked together as a group to add some pizazz to it with descriptive words and vibrant verbs. They were great! Then, the students did what we did together to their own paper. They worked with a peer to revise and edit.

Here are our final drafts:

Postcard Surprise

After reading A Pen Pal For Max, our class discussed the parts of a friendly letter. We wrote thank you letters to staff members at our school to practice.

We are taking our letter writing one step further with creating postcards to our parents. The students drafted a short letter to their parents and drew a wintery scene on the other side. I will mail these postcards closer to winter break. It will be a nice surprise for the parents to get a message in the mail from their child. With the three weeks between now and then, the students might even forget about writing them!

Thanksgiving Books

Our district has help workshops on each of the 6 Writing Traits. One idea that was provided for Organization is a listing & categorizing graphic organizer. Our students researched Thanksgiving in books and webquests, they took notes in their journals. Some of these notes were transferred to the graphic organizer (the students chose which notes were "most important") and then categorized. We also created notes on current Thanksgiving traditions and categorized them as well.

 

From those notes, the students used half-sheet notebook paper to write rough drafts. The students wrote three pages about the first Thanksgiving and three pages about current Thanksgiving practices.

Then the rough drafts were turned into beautiful books! The students worked SO HARD on making their books and creating their illustrations. I am very proud of how they turned out!!

 

Character Sketch Descriptive Writing

sdfsdf