Can I take a moment to brag a little? I have been bragging to my fellow teachers and my roommate, so why not just keep it going a bit and brag to you too!
My students finished up their 5 paragraph "essays" on Friday! 5 paragraphs! With indentation, proper punctuation, and introductory and concluding paragraphs. As they were writing and I was helping them edit, I was geeking out. I'm pretty sure they thought I was having a spazz attack because all I could keep saying was, "I am so excited!! You are doing so well! This is awesome!" There may have also been some excited hand motions in there...
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| The wonderful essays my students wrote! |
I have worked on hitting writing hard this year because I think it is a completed neglected skill in today's world. 2nd grade is such a wonderful year because kids are just starting to be able to work on their own and are making that transition from learning to read to reading to learn. I look for ways to include a writing project in each of my subject areas.
My students this year have surprised me at how they have taken a project I have had in mind and done it 10 times better than I was anticipating, such as the essays! It is fun to get to see students develop through the year and go from barely being able to write 1 paragraph to writing multiple. I would also like to add on that these students' abilities to write so well comes not from me being a great teacher, but from them having a wonderful God-given gift to learn and show what they have learned in a most marvelous way! I am in no way bragging about my own abilities, only about my students'!
We have not only done more structured writing in school, but have done some fun writing times as well. I have this wonderful book that has the beginning of a silly story and the students need to finish it. My students love them and break out into cheers when I hand one out. The kids can spend 10 minutes writing and fill up the front and back of the paper. No complaints about that here! Here is a story one of my students wrote that even included me as a character. I guess that's the risk you run teaching young students...being included in a story as a hippo hunter! I think that may actually be illegal in real life...
Either way, this story started out with a boy and his family having problems with hippopotamuses in their house and the students takes it from there:
"One day a girl named Miss Ongna rang the doorbell. She said, "I'm here to destroy or get rid of that hippopotamus!" She went to the trap and took out some bait for it. Then snap! She was in the hippo's tummy. She went bang bang with her fists and gum trapped her. "No!" said Kirk. So Kirk got a fishing rod and for Miss Ongna out. The hippos then said goodbye and Miss Ongna was homeless, so she lived with the 2nd graders and they lived happily ever after! The End."
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