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Working on Writing!

How long did I work today, you ask?  That would be 11.5 hours.  Was mine the last car in the parking lot?  It most certainly was.  If I work like this and “don’t work to educate our students” then what would happen if I really did work??  I mean for serious!  I can’t even think such things.  Work…educating children…11.5 hours…pathetic Mr. Greg embarrassing teachers everywhere.  I hope you can all forgive my laziness!

Story time!  Picture my arms up and my hands flapping around wildly.  That is our K team sign for we need to have a “meeting” because someone has a story and it’s usually a whopper about the goings on in our building (if I ever listed all of the goings on in our building, no one would believe me.  No, really it’s that unbelievable!)  Story time!

Today I was noticing a very strong odor.  It was an odor of rotten feet mixed with moldy shoes.  Take a minute to enjoy that pleasant thought.  I kept smelling it off and on all day.  It was especially pungent anytime I was at my guided reading table.  For the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out.  After school, as I was not working on my room, I discovered the offender.  It was the insole of one of my monster’s shoes.  True story.  That it lay, under their table.  Apparently it had been there all day.  Umm, I’m so observant!  hehe

Now that I have you all grossed out…here is the educational meat of my post!  Just what you’ve been waiting for!

One of my biggest weaknesses as a teacher is writing.  I still have no idea how to teach kindergarteners how to be good strong writers.  It is something I have researched, read books about, blog stalked and even attended some not so stellar workshops for…and still…I struggle.  This week I decided on a new approach.  An experiment.  I like to try new things…live outside the box.  Ya’ll know I am living in my own special reality…so here is what I did.

Monday we created a a tree map about bats.  We brainstormed ideas for what bats can do, what bats are and what bats have.  The monsters did a great job with this.  This was our pre-writing.  We did this on Tuesday!  

Wednesday, we used the ideas from our tree maps to write sentences  Each child shared a sentence about bats and I wrote the sentence.  After everyone has a turn, we echo read the sentences.  As I am writing we talk about spaces between words, directionality and punctuation.  Writing and conventions…working smarter not harder, people!!     

Today we “published” our writing.  I typed each sentence and also included a blank handwriting line.  The students copied their sentence on the line.  After they “wrote” their sentence, they illustrated their page.  Honestly, I was so pleased with their illustrations!  They turned out great.  I know this isn’t the greatest way to teach writing, but I was pleased with the results.  As the year progresses, I will start to give them more independence of their writing.  The next step will be to have them copy their sentence from the shared writing chart.  And then we will start working to write our own sentences.
And on Friday, Mr. Greg will have the book “published”  and will read it aloud to us.  Then we add it to our classroom library for everyone to enjoy! 
Thoughts?  Suggestions?  Criticism?  Snide remarks?
I would love to hear your ideas for teaching writing!  I need all the help I can get!  (In lots of ways!)

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