December Daily D2

Scrapbooking Papers by Jessica Sprague.

This post was inspired as we came home from school. They immediately wanted the tree on! Ahh....memories.

December Daily Challenge-d1

Time to start my December Daily. I am so excited to be documenting my holidays! This layout and papers are from Jessica Sprauge's Holiday In Hand online class last week. I edited pieces of it to fit my need. The pictures are of my tree and my girls' stockings. As we started to decorate the tree I began to tell my kids my favorite Christmas memory and Day 1 was created.

December Daily Challenge

As my students prepare to start their new genre of writing-essay. I am challenging them to write Daily in the month of December. I got the idea from Ali Edwards. I sent a letter home to parents in regards to the expectations. I am really phrasing this more as a slice of life, but calling it December Daily Challenge. In March, we will do this again with the Slice of Life Challenge.

December Daily

The parent letter below also went home. I used some of Calkin's letter to parents and add more to it.

Essay Unit Letter

I will be writing alongside my writers. So the blog will be very active in the month of December. I am also challenging myself to take a picture a day that month. If you would like ideas to get this started you can also visit Jessica Sprague's site.

Moving In Time

Today I taught my group of writers the art of moving in time to help the reader understand the meaning of the piece (idea from Raising the Quality of Narrative Writing by Calkins). However, I used a fabulous text Sweet, Sweet Memory. I also timelined the book to show how the piece moved from the present to the past and to the future at different points.

Lesson Plan

My writer's are wrapping their third small moment by "Putting Said to Bed" tomorrow and then going through the final stages of writing onto publishing. Once again I have nothing but wonderful things to say about this process. When my piece is finished I will post here.

Slice of Life Oct. 16

Outside my window...I finally can see the sun! It has been raining for so long. What a gorgeous fall day.

I am thinking...I wish I got more moments in time to just rest and recuperate from the dailies of life, however I miss the hustle and bustle of my little girls.

I am thankful for...my family always being there in the small and big moments; my students who are embracing their inner writer and surprising me daily with their mini-lessons for me when I confer with them; the person who nominated me for teacher of the year--ah inspiring to be thought of my such a great staff; my girls are healthy.

From the kitchen...diet dr.pepper and my new favorite snack--kettle corn

I am wearing...pajama pants and big t-shirt.

I am creating...an outline for my entry one of my national boards.

I am going...to enjoy my favorite shows...I deserve a little quiet time.

I am reading...Eclipse: book 3 of the twilight series and starting to read The Art of Teaching Writing by Lucy Calkins.

I am hoping...everyone stays healthy in my family.

I am hearing...the sound of airplanes flying overhead as they prepare to land at the local airport.

Around the house...the sound of silence. Girls are with their daddy today and I am enjoying it, but also glad that they will be home soon.

Slice of Life

"Can we quickly run to Target before we go home?" I ask my mom while Emma crams a few more fries in her mouth.

"Sure," she smiles.

We quickly drive a few miles away. I am pondering why the leaves still haven't changed even though October is a few days away. Knowing that when the first freeze arrives my allergies will be gone. How I wish I had time to just sit, rest and enjoy nature...but not my life right now!

We walk into Target and I make my few purchases--one of them a new car seat for Gracie who is now almost 3 and has outgrown her other one. I get the bright idea to switch them out. I mean really it can't take that long right?

WRONG!! Emma and Gracie are in the front seats of my car while mom tries to read the directions to me and Emma is screaming at me to turn on Imagination Movers and Gracie is just upset because I am changing out her car seat.

30 minutes later I am sweating and exhausted, but achieved my goal. New car seat intact--check....unhappy Gracie--check...safe child--check!

Literacy Workshop is up and running....

My students have completed their first piece for me which I use as a baseline to create the rest of the nine weeks lessons. This year my focus is on making my conferring sessions count. Last year I felt so rushed trying to get to all the writers who wanted to meet with me, so I thought it through and came up with a schedule for my writers. I meet with six-seven writers a day Monday-Thursday. Then another six-seven students have an opportunity to visit with a "Guest Conferrer." Many times it is a parent who has volunteered to come in. I wrote a letter to the helper with their own conferring sheet and they meet with a writer also. So on a typical day 12 of my students (roughly 1/2 the class) talk about their writing with an adult. I love it!!! This week was my first week to start the "Guest Conferrer" and it has been a huge success. I highly recommend it. In fact, one day my principal was the guest conferrer and I called Student A up to confer with me and she said, "Well, actually Ms. S, I would prefer to meet with Ms. Sumner!" I giggled and explained while she was welcome to visit with Ms. Sumner, if there was time, I needed to meet with her because I had a special lesson in mind that was just for her.

If you would like to get this started feel free to adapt my letter and conferring records. The conferring record template was from Stacy and Two Writing Teachers and I tweaked it for my needs in the classroom.


Guest Conferrer Record for Meeting With Student

Classroom Helper

Parent Letter Asking for Volunteers
Parent Letter for Conferring