Once I start yapping, I sometimes forget my train of thought. So before I even start getting into the details of this post, I must first credit the wonderful ladies over at Kinder Gals. Kim and Megan were the ones who came up with this AWESOME writing activity and I knew I just had to use this idea in my classroom. Head on over to their amazing blog to read and see (their photos are so great) how they implemented this idea in Megan's classroom.
Here is what I did with my Kinders!
First, I read aloud The Family Book by my FaVoRiTe children's book author and illustrator Todd Parr. If you are not familiar with his work, click HERE to visit his website. I have so many of his wonderful books! His illustrations are colorful, simple, yet powerful. His words are short and sweet, very Kinder-friendly. I love the messages that his books send.
Next, I hung these cute little buggers up on our whiteboard.
There are many words to describe me, but - unfortunately - "creative" is not one of them. Our amazing educational assistant made these for us! I am oh-so-grateful to have her join Room 105 this year!! Here they are up close:
We only filled out the first two kids "Families can..." and "Families have..." right away in the morning. They were already getting antsy by the second one. We then went on with our daily Reading rotations / small group instruction and Literacy Centers. After that was over, we went back to the carpet and finished with "Families like to..." and "Families are..."
I gave each child a pencil, a clipboard, and a writing sheet so they could write the words / copy the words from the board. This was a GREAT challenge for many of my kiddos, but I find it is better to make the writing activity interactive than have them only suggest ideas. Many children will tune out if they are not writing themselves.
All of these ideas came directly from my students - though some of them borrowed their ideas from Todd Parr's book.
This is what our bulletin board looked like when we put it all together!
Here is the work of some of my developing writers:
Like I said before...this was a challenging activity for my emergent writers. I always encourage them to do their best every time! For some of my hesitant kiddos, I am just happy for their participation. :)
Well, I guess that's it! Let me know how this writing activity works in your own classroom! As always, thanks for stopping by! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments make my day!