I’m working on revamping my Write the Room Center Activities this week. I have had a few cute Fall activities up, but I want to do more sentence writing.
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| Thanksgiving Write the Room Center Activities |
A good one I found that has no punctuation that the kids can write on any white boards, chalk boards, or on paper I found HERE at Teacher’s Notebook from Learning from Superstars! Thanks so much!
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| Thanksgiving Write the Room Center Activities |
I will put the sheets up on the wall with some sheet protectors. Then the kiddos can write the sentences of their choice out on paper, or on the whiteboards provided in the center. They will have to choose the correct punctuation.
Here is another cute one HERE.
A few generic Write the Room pages that would go cute with your centers I found HERE. and HERE at TPT.
I like to WRITE EVERY DAY. I’ll do a blog post of each of my days of the week and how I incorporate writing into our daily themes. The first day is MONDAY. We do Weekend News on Monday. I use dotted lined 2nd grade paper and I have a bigger rectangle for an illustration. I also have lines all down the backside for my really good writers.
| Writing about our Weekend News in 2nd Grad |
We call it Weekend News because we write about what our family did on the weekend; whether it was a birthday party, a soccer game, shopping at Walmart or a trip to the movies, we write all about it. I always start with a REAL MINI lesson on one of the 6 traits of good writing. I ALWAYS start with IDEAS, then move to CONVENTIONS. I probably work on these 2 for at least 2 months.
I’ve always used the 6 Traits Writing Model. Our district is moving to the 4 Blocks method which is easier to teach, but it doesn’t have enough breadth for gifted kids, so I’ll be using both. It is an unedited weekly writing project, but I help with spelling harder words as I peruse the room.
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| Thanksgiving Write the Room Center Activities – Here are some of my table decorations I’ve been putting up this weekend too. CUTE! |
I do a brainstorm on my white board of activities the kids dictate to me. The other thing I have always done is write out a sentence frame;
On Friday I played…. On Saturday I went…….. On Sunday my family and I……
That way the kids get some sight words memorized and have a way to cut up the weekend into 3 simple paragraphs. Each week I write a new brainstorm. A great website for graphic organizers to write on just about any topic can be found HERE at vrml k12. They have lots of powerpoints on lots of subjects good for kids brainstorming in 1st and 2nd grades. I teach ORGANIZATION mid year.
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| Did YOUR family go out to eat like we did? Did you go to Jimmy Johns too? It’s super yum! |
An easy way to design the paper you want your students to use is to go on this website and peruse her various grades and styles of writing paper. Check out Donna Young.org. It is all free and I loved the different sizes of dotted, lined paper you could print out for a booklet of “Weekend News” or for a Journal. You could just add a small rectangle for an illustration and the words WEEKEND NEWS across the top.
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| Thanksgiving Write the Room Center Activities. Here are my cute little handmade pilgrims. |
A good CHECKLIST for students to use when they are done with their Weekend News can be found HERE at Read Write Think. This is a silent, at your desk, unedited writing activity. Kids can use their personal journals or the word wall to help with sight words. Otherwise they are sounding out words they write.
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| This was an idea for “WORD CHOICE” from Cheryl Sigmon’s website on 4 Blocks Method for writing…. link is HERE. I teach Word Choice the 3rd month of school. It reduces how many “good” and “nice” words you get in student writing…..and you get spectacular “$100 words” as we call them!! Some fun books I use to teach kids the story of Thanksgiving. It is a good one to get them thinking about if mom has put up the decorations for Thanksgiving yet around the house. As you can see I decorated mine all up already. Woot! |
Weekend News is a very valuable and simple way to start your week writing on Monday. Check out what I do on Fridays HERE. Check back to see what I do the rest of the week!!
