Letter Writing Self-Evaluations

This month my second graders have begun to write weekly letters home to their families.  The letters make perfect writing samples and offer parents a chance to see what their children are learning each week.  It also gives them a look at their child's writing development.  However, It occurred to me after reading this weeks letters that my students parents might just be wondering if I am teaching their children anything at all!

 My second graders have been reading morning messages written in the "friendly letter" format for most of the school year and have written letters to their pen pals in Louisiana.  They have helped me edit our morning messages and kindly corrected my errors.  They write daily across the curriculum. We have had many conversations as a whole group and 1:1 about the format of a letter and appropriate use of conventions (capitals, punctuation, spelling). Yet,  when I set my students loose to write their letters this week they barely crafted more than 2-3 complete sentences, talked about what they ate for lunch, didn't start their sentences with capital letters or end them with punctuation.  One student didn't even sign his name with a capital letter. Ugh!!!!

Then it occurred to me.  It's time for a little self-evaluation!  I whipped up a Google Form with the areas I wanted students to focus their attention on and then met with each student individually.  Together we reviewed their letter as they answered each statement on the evaluation sheet.  We talked about what they did well and what they wanted to work on when they wrote their next letter.  My plan is to have students independently fill out the self-evaluation form each week.  My hope is that students will show me what they can really do when they invest a little more of themselves into their writing.

Here is the form I created :

Writing Prompts and Sentences

Last week a good friend of mine posted on Facebook that it was International Book Week and that I should grab the nearest book, turn to page 52 and record the 5th sentence on the page as my next post.  I loved the idea and tried it out.  I got addicted to the idea and proceeded to go through my bookshelf, turn to page 52 of each book and read the 5th sentence on the page.  In the middle of this frenzy it occurred to me that this could be an awesome way to come up with writing prompts and reinforce the idea of a sentence for my second graders!

My sweet little workaholics had been asking me for homework for several days (we are still in the honeymoon phase) so I made their wish my demand this week and created a homework packet that they could work on throughout the following week.  It included reading, spelling, math and writing activities.  For writing I gave them a similar assignment to the one my friend gave me. I asked them to collect 10 reading materials from around their house.  It could be books, magazines, newspapers, cookbooks, you name it.  They had to turn to page 5 and record the 3rd sentence.  My plan is to use these sentences as future writing prompts and homework assignments.  

Here are some of their "found" sentences.

Graphics by DJ Inkers @ djinkers.com

This is a secret between you and me.

"No electric blankets."

Rainbow Shiner, lookin' sharp.

"Why don't you go play with squirrel?

"Aha!"

The hard, woody stem is called a tree trunk.

The black widow is one of the few North American spiders whose bite can hurt humans.

I think they will make for some great writing prompts...

And just a little aside, I looked up International Book Week because another friend of mine questioned whether or not this was legitimate.  It turns out you can host "International Book Week" whenever you want...there is no designated week. :)

Teaching Conventions

This year in my second grade classroom we are beginning the day with a Morning Meeting.  We greet each other, go over our schedule, share and read a morning message.  During the first two weeks of school we just focused on the message.  During the 3rd and 4th week we started looking at the parts of the message that I always include (date, greeting, message, closing, signature).  This week I started leaving out punctuation, misspelling words, etc.  I ask students to read the message first and then tell me something I did WELL.  This was DIFFICULT in the beginning.  The mistakes are the first things they see and want to tell me about.  However, I feel strongly that we need to first look at what the writer has done well and then talk about the places the writer can improve.  After we share about all the things I have done well we begin to look at the areas I need to fix.  When a student comes up to show me what to fix I let them fix my problem and then ask them to explain why I should do this.

Student: "You didn't put capital letters at the beginning of your name."
Me: "Why should I do that?"
Student: "Because you always start a persons name with capital letters."
Me: "Oh, I see.  Thank you for teaching me that!"

This is something my students have discussed in kindergarten,  first grade and now in second grade.  I have never taught conventions this way, but wonder "WHY IN THE WORLD HAVEN'T I?"  I love the way this is reinforcing conventions and their importance and that the children are being empowered by helping and teaching me why I should use the conventions.  I am excited to see how this transfers to their own writing.  I will keep you posted.

Do you have any other ideas for teaching conventions in second grade?  I would LOVE to hear them.

Revisiting Storybird

Tonight I came across a wonderful Blog called Kleinspiration.  The author, Erin Klein, recently had an article published in the Classroom 2.0 Book Project.  Her article, Digital Writer's Workshop, was about troubleshooting through collaboration and reflection when using digital writing tools in the classroom.  One of the tools she discussed using was Storybird.

I introduced Storybird to my second graders this year (click here and here for previous posts) and found they were really excited about creating stories using this tool in the beginning but that their excitement fizzled rather quickly.  Many of  my really motivated writers did not even complete their Storybird writing projects leading me to believe the tool wasn't appropriate for such young children.  After reading Erin's article I am newly inspired and ready to try again this coming fall.  She suggested having students write first and then use Storybird to publish.  When I introduced Storybird to my kiddos this past year they chose illustrations first and then tried to create a story based on those illustrations.  This was REALLY HARD for them because writing fiction is CHALLENGING for 7 and 8 year olds.  My students were also trying to create their stories using Mini Dells.  This was a challenge because the screens were so small!

My new plan is to introduce the website to my students at the beginning of the school year by showing them some stories that I have written and sharing my writing process (Erin's suggestion).  After we build up a collection of shared writing we will work together to publish a few of our writing pieces using Storybird. I have a feeling this is going to work much better. I will post in more detail once we begin our writing journey this fall!

Student Led Conferences

WoW!  This year flew by!  It is hard to believe tomorrow is our last day of school, but it is.  We finished our student led conferences last week and in some ways have struggled a bit to stay focused during our last few days together.  One of the last things students shared with their parents during their conference was "Technology and Summer Learning Opportunities."  One of the options they have is to sign-up to our classroom blog via email to recieve posts from me on Tuesdays and Thursdays over the summer.  My hope is that we can continue to keep our learning community alive and well over the summer using technology.  In an effort to do this I taught my students how to comment on our classroom blog.  I modeled commenting for them and then we practiced. You can check out their comments and our classroom blog by clicking here.  Throughout the summer I plan to post fun, engaging activities that students can try at home.  I am hoping they will try some (if not all) of them and then comment on how the activity turned out. I also let them know they could email me any projects that they do and I will post them on the blog.

Here are a few pictures of our portfolios and the work that we shared during our conferences.



Students created "Wild & Calm" self portraits.  I got this great idea from Art Projects for Kids.




The first pocket has our agenda.  The math section is a "Show What You Know" piece.  Students do the math while their parents watch.  We review before the conference.  I find that some parents have a really hard time allowing their child to do this part without jumping in and taking over though.



This year we created Reading Posters using Glogster EDU. You can check them out by heading to our Classroom Blog and clicking on the "Student-Led Conference" tab at the top.

Next came our writing section.  This year I typed each students September and May writing samples and put them in the front.  I wanted parents to notice the growth their child had made in word choice, sentence structure and content before they looked at their child's spelling and conventions.  Sometimes it is hard to see past the errors.  Next I put the planning sheet from their personal narratives so parents could see the process their child went through to create the story.  Then students showed their published digital version of the story here.  Students also had a non-fiction research piece of writing about dinosaurs and all of the letters they wrote to their parents throughout the school year.



TodaysMeet

I LOVE using this site as a quick assessment tool in our second grade classroom.  I almost forgot all about it until a co-worker asked me what it was called the other day.  This afternoon I introduced TodaysMeet to my tech savvy second graders.  TodaysMeet is a kind of mini facebook or twitter type website.  Students make posts to specific questions that I ask and those posts appear in real time on the site for all to read.  Using this site allows me to assess understanding for a specific question I am asking and also clues me into a students independence with spelling and other conventions.  Students get practice writing a response for others to read as well as more practice reading which is great.  You can create a TodaysMeet page that lasts for as little as 2 hours or one that continues for up to a year.  Today we wrote about what we liked most about reading and a response to what we thought Dr. Seuss was trying to teach us by telling us the story of Gertrude McFuzz.  I am sure there are a million different ways we could use this tool in our classrooms.  Here is a link to the two we used today.  They will only be "open" for one week.

What do you like most about reading?

Gertrude McFuzz

What are some other ways you might use TodaysMeet in your classroom?

Habitat Research

We just finished our final habitat research project.  Second graders worked with middle school tech buddies to make a digital poster about their habitat using Glogster.  Here are a couple that were finished.  I think we are ready to start exploring this on our own now!

I am not sure what happened to our GLOGS!  Our 7th grade tech buddies helped us with this project and may have deleted them from their accounts.  BUMMER!  Good thing I just signed us up for GLOGSTER.EDU.  Can't wait to start exploring this with my kiddos.

A Research Strategy That Doesn't Overwhelm Second Graders!

I am so excited about a research strategy that I came across in Ralph Fletcher's book Non-Fiction Craft Lessons:Teaching Information Writing K-8.  Research can be overwhelming and unmanageable for second graders but if you have them take an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of copy paper and fold it into fourths it suddenly becomes manageable and exciting for them!  Students write, sketch and/or label an interesting fact for each box while reading trade books, websites and listening/watching videos about their topic.  This strategy encourages students to write "just enough" of the information to help them remember the interesting fact later and put that information into their own words (something I have found very challenging for second graders of all levels to do) when the time comes to create their own teaching books.  This strategy also helps students develop a clear topic sentence and organize their writing.  After students have collected 8-12 facts you have them cut the four squares apart and group them into sections that go together.  They can move facts around until they sound just right.

  

Here are some photos of second graders using this strategy.

Do you have any strategies that have allowed second graders to do independent research?

Storybird is a Success!

My students are loving Storybird.  Did you know you can do a school/class fundraiser with your students published stories?  We are so excited about this we are trying it out so we can buy more books for our classroom library.  Here is one of the stories a student published.  She has been writing at home on the weekends!

Cats on the Moon. by A2011P on Storybird

Reluctant Writer's Beware!

I have been reading and rediscovering this weekend!  I have a class full of reluctant writer's and my usual tricks are not working.  I hit the books and looked through my notes from previous years and my trip to the ISTE conference that I attended  in Philidelphia this past summer.  Storybird!  How could I have forgotten you?  This morning my Kindergarten son and I explored the website and created a storybird.  I can't wait to introduce this website to my second graders!

An Alien and a Monster on Storybird

Writing Through the Mask

Over the summer I spent a lot of time reading the works of Katy Wood Ray.  In our writer's workshop we have been working with one of her strategies and  "imaging the life" behind the books we have been reading.  Our guided question for the past two weeks has been "What experiences might the author have had to give them the idea for this story."  Last week we made Halloween Hang-ups by Martha Stewart and "imagined" the life behind our creepy characters.  I used one of Ralph Fletcher's writing strategies called writing through the mask to help guide their writing.  The kids ran with this and did an amazing job! My most reluctant writer was busily writing for the entire workshop!  Here are some pictures of the hang-ups.