Monday, March 19, 2012

Writing with 2/3 kids

Oh, one more thing that IS worth saying--

I interviewed most of my students last week for info for their files, and one of them said that his favorite/easiest class at school was writing. I was shocked. He's not really "the type." He does great at math and is the bey blade ring leader of the pack. Anyway, he said we should do more writing activities, and I thought it was a great idea. So, I found some old notebooks in the supply closet, ripped all the used pages out, and brought them to our class. I brought a ton of magazines (also ripped out all the inappropriate pages in those) and we cut out inspiring pictures and glued them on the front of the notebooks. Today before afterschool, I wrote prompts at the top of the first five or so pages. Some of the pages were for listing things, and others were for describing. But I didn't put the same prompts in everyone's books; I tried to make them specific to the students. For one student who I knew liked cute things and wrote her own songs, I had "the most beautiful things in the world are..." and "describe how you write a song, and/or write a song" on two of her pages. For one who likes food and cookbooks a ton, his first page was "my favorite foods to cook and eat are..." Some wrote more than others, and some just put a one or two word answer, but I tried to encourage them to fill up the page or at least half and to use sentences. Some of them used up all five pages in one day. So it definitely needs tweaking to get them to actually write or tell stories and spend some time on it. More research is required...

Another cool thing we finished up today is writing letters to a class of students at the school I worked at in the Dominican Republic. We spent two days working on it, and after they finished their letters, they could draw a picture to send with their letter. I am really excited about this project. I can't wait till we get some letters back and can read them! Hopefully it will be right when we are doing our next unit about different countries, because the country we are doing is the DR.
So blog peeps. It's been a while.

I've been doing a lot of thinking.

I think I am going back to school. Still not 100% solid about it, but it will probably happen. The program is to get a teaching certificate for 1-8 grade. It will be a lot of work. That is what makes me not want to do it. haha Still waiting for the gut feeling of "go for it!" but that may not come before the first day of class...

Rowing is starting up a week from today. Preparing for that keeps me sore and tired, and on a weird schedule.

AND we're going to Brazil a week from Wednesday. I haven't really begun to imagine what it will be like to be gone for so long, on vacation, in a place where I don't know anyone or speak the language. I am looking forward to the shopping, and the food, which I have heard Caleb talk about for so long and now can finally experience. I am also really excited to see Iguazu Falls and go on a little mini vacation within the big vacation.

I just finished reading the first book in the Mitford series, which I liked more than I thought I would.

Well, the beautiful thoughts aren't really coming out tonight I guess. It's 10 pm and I feel old. Bedtime. Maybe the next one will be more interesting.