Sunday, January 12, 2014

Writing Freebie and Best Pencil Sharpener Ever!

Classroom Freebies Manic Monday
Are you ready for another week?
We only had 3 days last week because of the cold temps.
This week the kids are in class Monday - Thursday
and Friday is a Teacher Work Day.
Not too bad of a schedule.

I was organizing my computer files this weekend
and came across this sheet.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4_vASnpCuzoYzJPUWNoazJoN3M/edit?usp=sharing
Here is the link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4_vASnpCuzob3VXMkhqaUtUTzg/edit?usp=sharing
(I tried to add the link to the picture,
but Blogger isn't letting me. 
Anyone else having this problem?)


I used it to have the kids think about how they begin their writing.


Individually, the kids ranked the openings.
Then they got together with a partner and had to agree on an order.
Each partner group joined another group and had to agree on an order.
Finally, we came together as a class to discuss the outcomes.


The next day, I saw some more exciting openings being written!


What are some ways you get kids to write more exciting openings?






The second big news...
I got a new pencil sharpener!
It's from
www.classroomfriendlysupplies.com
Do you want to see how well it works?
Here is the unsharpened pencil.

I placed it in the pencil sharpener.
I turned the handle a few times.

This is what happened!
I highly recommend having one of these in your classroom.
I'm even thinking of getting a second one.



Have a great week!

3 comments:

  1. Alright--I'm coming down to your room to sharpen my pencils. Looks like I know what I'm doing on the teacher workday.

    matt

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  2. Very cute and fun. But "it's" = "it is" - okay in the second sentence, but needs to be changed to "its" 2 times in the last sentence.

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  3. (Look like the grammar police has a little too much time on their hands!)

    I love this idea...making the student give his/her opinion first and then make larger and larger groups makes it more likely that the strongest idea will prevail. And banish the "One day there was an alligator named..." beginnings that younger writers are so fond of. (Oops, hope the GP doesn't notice I ended a sentence with a preposition!)

    ReplyDelete