Sunday, March 16, 2014

Leprechauns!!!

Did any leprechauns visit your classroom for St. Patricks day? Our class made traps hoping that they would catch one.


There were so many creative leprechaun traps this year. Students used l kinds of different materials for making them, and they went all out with their decorating. They used shamrocks, rainbows, and of course, gold to draw in the leprechauns. 


Unfortunately, when it was all said and done, the leprechauns were just too sneaky. They managed to avoid getting caught by any of the traps. They also left a big mess and didn't clean any of it up! Pesky little buggers!




Saturday, March 1, 2014

Writing Ideas



We have been using small notebooks to brainstorm different ideas for writing. It has been a really helpful for students to practice generating ideas, which is an important step in the writing process. In Writers Workshop, students need to filter through all of their possible ideas and choose one "small moment" to focus on. 
Some students seem to want to write about all of the ideas that they jot down in their notebooks, so it can take some practice for them to let go and just concentrate on one small moment. 

A great thing about keeping all of the ideas in one place is that they are very accessible to students. If they are stumped on what to write about a few months down the line, they can flip through their notebook and find a past idea that might conjure up some inspiration. How do you like to genera rate ideas with your young writers?