Question of the Day - Great Way to Promote Writing and Get to Know Your Students Better

Question of the Day is something both my students and I love doing in our class. Each day I post a question on my board. 

This is an "optional" question that students can answer if they want to. Sometimes the questions are silly, sometimes they're serious, sometimes they are about school, sometimes they are about home. I mix it up to keep it engaging and fun. Students are allowed to write their answers on sticky notes and then post their answers up on the board. I ask students to write their answers during any free time, Daily 5, or writing time. It is super fun to read their responses throughout the day. At the end of the day, we take 5 minutes right before we leave to read through all the answers. This gives the kiddos a chance to listen to their peers' responses and get to know each other better. I also learn a LOT about my students from doing this. Because this is an optional activity, I sweeten the pot a little bit by offering a fake penny to each student who writes an answer (we use a coin system to buy non-tangible rewards in my class). Then, I place all the answers in a cup or bucket and have my helper of the day draw 1 name out. That person gets a fake nickel as a "reward." This also gives me a chance to embed good sportsmanship opportunities. :-) 

I've discovered that this is a really great way to build classroom community and climate. I learn a lot about my students, and I will often write my own answers too, and the students love learning about me. I invite visitors coming through to write responses also - the students get a kick out of that (i.e. other teachers, the principal, etc...)! This is one quick and easy way to integrate writing, speaking, and listening easily and quickly into the classroom, and it helps me to build relationships and positive classroom while only taking about 5 minutes of class time. 

The possibilities for how to use these questions are really quite endless. While I do mine on the board, you could make a bulletin board, you could have students write responses in notebooks or on iPads, you could have students share with partners by doing Mix n' Match or another cooperative learning strategy, you could use these as journal prompts, etc... 

Thinking of the questions is always the hardest part about these. For a no-prep option, please see my TPT store to download a whole set of questions (220 questions to choose from) already typed and prepped. All you have to do is print and cut in half! I've also included two different versions of the QOTD (question of the day) pennant banners I created to go with the questions. I will be throwing a sale on this item for 20% off now through Friday! Click HERE or click the picture below:

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iPad Expert Application

I created this application to have my students "apply" for the job of iPad Expert (or Manager). I seriously had the cutest responses ever. I had one girl write that she wanted this job because it would be her first job ever, and she said that if she were to be hired, it would give her experience for later in life for more jobs. After handing out applications to whomever wanted one, I then "interviewed" the applicants. This was such a great way to incorporate writing and justifying in the classroom. I was able to see who actually wanted the job bad enough to fill out the 2 page application! Again, while I was interviewing students, I got some pretty adorable responses. I asked one girl if her parents knew that she listed them as references and what they thought about it. She said that her parents thought she was too young for a job, but they were happy for her anyway. Too cute! :-) 

Check out my version at my TpT store, or feel free to use this idea in your own classroom. It's a great tool, and you will be highly amused by the responses you get! Click HERE or click the picture below.

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Opinion Writing

I am on a writing kick I've noticed. However, I really feel like the students have done a great job with writing this year, and I feel like they really understand the writing process. We've amped up the amount of writing the kiddos are doing in all subject areas, and it shows. Makes a teacher proud! :-)

Anyway, we've informally done opinion writing all year, but we started a formal unit on it just recently. Here is the anchor chart we made for opinion writing:

I'm excited to see how their writing turns out. They were allowed to write about whatever topic they chose. More pictures to come later! 

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Owl Moon and Descriptive Writing

Happy Monday! We recently finished a unit in shared reading using the book Owl Moon. This book is such a great book for helping students practice visualizing, helping them to use and apply context clues, and helping them to identify descriptive words. 

With common core, we are integrating even more writing. My students had to read the story and visualize what was happening at different point within the story. They then drew a quick pic of what they were visualizing and wrote a sentence to describe their quick pics. Then, we close read the story to find out more information about our text dependent questions. We had a book talk to discuss the story and to choose lines from the book that really spoke to us and that were powerful to the story. My students had awesome thoughts, and it's always so cool to see them analyzing a book at such a young age! 

After reading the book, we then went back and close read again to find examples of descriptive words. The students worked together to find examples and to create a list of descriptive words. There were a ton in this book! We talked about how those descriptive words can help readers paint a picture in their heads and that they help readers to use their 5 senses to imagine that they were there in the book. I found an awesome owl craftivity on Amy Lemons' TpT website that was free (check it out HERE), and I printed it on cardstock. I then traced the body of the owl on lined paper and made enough copies for each child. The students then took what they learned about descriptive writing to write Who Am I riddles. They had to write about themselves using descriptive words, and then they were able to put together the owl craftivity and color it. I then stapled it on top of their writing, and hung them on the back bulletin board. The kiddos love reading them during Daily 5 time to try to figure out whose is whose!  See the pictures below! :-) The kiddos did a super job, and we will continue to work on using descriptive words in our writing!

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Animal Research Revisited

Well, as some of you have noticed, I took a mini-hiatus from blogging and TpT. There really wasn't any particular reason, I just was enjoying some me time I guess. The hubby started a new position a few months ago, and he has his nights and weekends free now (this was quite a rarity in days of past), so we have just been nesting and enjoying spending time together, eating dinner together every night, and taking walks each evening! Anyway, I had a reader actually e-mail me to check on me and see if everything was ok since I hadn't blogged in a while. I thought that was so sweet, and it's nice to know that people are out there reading my posts, so thank you Tabitha!

Well, I think I had posted a while back about my animal research project informational writing unit that I had on TpT (go here to check it out). This unit was made out of necessity, as my own kiddos were working on this during writing a while ago. I just realized the other day that I never posted pics, so here they are!

The kiddos did a terrific job. It's so fun to see them take a piece of writing through the writing process and to see the final results! 

Anyway, have a terrific weekend, and now that I'm officially back, be expecting more posts next week!

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Informal Daily Writing Checklist

I've finally created a daily writing checklist to use during writer's conference or for informal observation as I walk around during writing time. This would also be handy for Daily 5, Work on Writing. This will help me collect data that I can then use for both grade cards and for other student data purposes.

I plan to put this sheet on a clipboard, write the date at the top, come up with how I want my coding system to be (letter grade, 3/2/1, +/-, etc), and quickly and easily mark what I observe for each student on their daily writing/work. The categories covered/included are capitalization, punctuation, and complete sentences. I won't use this every single day, but maybe a couple times a week. This then keeps all of my informal observation data in one place, or I can easily transfer it to my gradebook.

I am going to include a free copy of it in case you'd like to use it also in your classroom!

Enjoy, and I hope you can use this! I've included both a student numbered version (if you use student numbers in your classroom for confidentiality purposes) and a blank one for you to write in the students' names.

 

To download, either click HERE, or click on the picture below.

 



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Snowman Technical Writing

I am pretty lucky in that my school district has so many resources for teachers. For writing, they actually have mini-lessons that you can use/refer to/modify if you want. How cool is that??!! Anyway, one of the lessons I love using each year is Snowman Technical Writing. To start, we talk about what technical writing is, when we would see/use it, and we then make an anchor chart (which I forgot to take a picture of). I collect examples of technical writing, and the students spend some time making observations and discussing what they notice. We talk about how technical writing can include time order words. Then, we read the book, The Biggest, Best Snowman by Margery Cuyler. We made connections and discussed if we'd ever built a snowman before. Then, we talked about the steps that the girl took to build a snowman. Students orally sequenced the steps to each other. Next, students wrote their steps on white pieces of paper that I'd cut up. After revising/editing their writing, students then went over their writing in marker and created their snowmen! They turned out super cute and fitting for winter (it's too bad the sweet snowmen pictures didn't bring a relaxing snow day with them, ha)! Enjoy!

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