Encouraging Writing in the Classroom

This year I have started my 1st and 2nd graders on daily writing assignments.  Honestly, I was hesitant to start.  I was fearful that making the kids write everyday would end up with a nightmare of complaining, whining, and scribbling some junky, meaningless words down just to fill the square.  

I was wrong.  It turns out that journal writing has been a wonderful way to encourage students to find their voice, and discover the joys of writing.  They will find the perfect outlet to share their thoughts, feelings, and dreams.  At the same time they will become experts on how to construct a sentence, while their punctuation and spelling skills improve.  Very important for the teacher side of things.




Here is how:
Here are a few ideas to get you started:

First you will need a notebook, spiral or composition book for each student.  For younger kids, make sure you teach them to start at the beginning of their books and write on the next page each day.  Otherwise they will choose a random page and you will never find their stories.  Writing every day is essential in developing a healthy writing habit!

Set a requirement for how many sentences they have to write.  I started with 3 or 4, and plan to work up to 6-8 as they get more comfortable writing.

Respond.  Not always of course, there is not enough time in the day, but even just say “Wow that’s crazy!” to show that they really have an audience when they are writing.  (Another of my students likes to write a personal note to me every day, he eagerly looks for my response.  It is very sweet.)

Optional:  I like to correct spelling by writing the word correctly in the margins so I am not marking up their work, but they can reference the spelling for the next time.

Reward.  I use class Dojo and give a point for completing their story, or two if they work very hard.  

Make sure you have a variety of prompts that the students can relate to.  Include ideas from sharing thoughts, experiences, dreams, imagination, and fantasy.  

Here are a few prompts to get you started: Write about a time you were brave?
What is something you do not want to do? (One of my first graders put change diapers for this one, it was very cute!)
If you had lots of money what would you buy?
What makes you happy?
Write about a time you got really dirty.
Write about a hot air balloon ride.
What do you think it would be like to be blind?
What would you do if you were the king or queen?
What is something you should work harder at and why?
Write a story about your new pet. It can be any animal in the world.
Write about 3 things you like to do when you are quiet.
Write about going to the dentist.
Tell about a time you were hurt.
Write about learning to ride a bike.

As I am a planner, I went ahead and made up 170 prompts on cards so I won't have to think about it for the rest of the year!

Get them here:

Writing Prompts for the Year

My Buggy Backyard Classroom Theme

This year I decided to go with the bug theme.  So cute and fun!

Check out the old school desks.  I love them though!  I found hanging paper lanterns from 5 and Below for $1 each.  Set's off the backyard look.

This board idea came from here.  I was in the Dollar Tree and saw the fairy wings.   OOOH!  Butterflies for a buck!  I'll take it.  I just used construction paper for the caterpillar and dragonflies.

Birthday Chart has bugs in jars.  I used the poster maker at the teacher center to make this.  Nice and big so it filled up a good chunk of wall, yay!

Matching alphabet and numbers.  Letters and Numbers

Cozy Spot Changer

So, having pillows and cushions in my room has always been important to me to encourage the kids to curl up with a book.  Of course, the downside is the inevitable squabbling over who gets to sit on the cushion.  I almost took them all home this year to avoid the drama, but I thought of something that will get rid of the problem, and let the comfy spots get used fairly.
Very simple really.  I used Powerpoint to make a wheel with my kids in the center.  I took pictures of all my pillows, (and headsets)  we argue about those too!  I assigned one student to be the cozy spot changer.  She will turn the wheel one turn every day so everyone can see clearly who's turn it is and there will be no fuss!  Yay!

Powerpoint tip:  Just insert circles and lines.  Use two separate pages, put a brad in the center.

Clean That Table Kiddos!

I am at a little Christian school, where I have the privilege of teaching the first and second grade.  Total of 11 kids, crazy, I know!!  Cleaning our table after lunch has always been the worst chore.  "Who's the table washer?  Who are the floor sweepers?"  No-one seems to know.
We try, but we never have done very well at getting our table clean.  I figured, hey, we are the little ones, the 8th graders can handle our crumbs and juice drips...

Until....  I tried boys against girls.  I assigned each a table and said, ok, lets see who can clean it the best.  If anyone's table is not good, they will have to do both tables next time.  They pretty much went bananas on the most dedicated 6-7 year old cleaning frenzy I had ever seen!  They wiped off the chairs, pushed them all in, they did an incredible job!  And, they loved it.

I did have a few kinks to work out though...  First they were soaking towels, and then getting more towels to dry.  Big waste.  To solve it, I spray 6 half sheet towels and hand them out.  They are not allowed any more.  Problem 2 was they were running all around the room.  To fix that one, they will get a 5 min. time out for running.  No hurry just clean!

It's been a week and it really has morphed from being a competition, to just having fun working together.  Some of the boys even like to help the girls out, since there's only 4 girls and 7 boys.  I haven't had a losing team yet.

My New Lesson Plan Book, YAY!

I have tried numerous different planbooks, but I wanted to really go for it, and make my own.  Here is what I came up with.

The Cover Page

The class schedule.   Scroll down to get the schedule for free.  :)

6 Subject weekly lesson plan, room for detailed notes, and events and reminders in the top left banner.  Holidays are included in the banner too.

Pre-dated for this school year, yay, I hate doing all those dates by hand, it takes forever!

Here is the month at a glance calendar, there is a ton of "stickers" you can use for all those dates, inservice, report cards, conferences, birthdays, 1/2 days, meetings, etc...

Attendance pages come in 6 styles, somehow it makes me feel a sense of progress to have the pages different for each marking period.  Also like not having to write all those names by hand, just copy and paste them here, and into the grade book, next part...

I included all the elementary headings, you can copy and paste those in, or for higher grades,      period 1, 2, etc...

The kids:  So excited to have all this info right at my fingertips, no looking through files for the phone numbers, and allergies and all that stuff.

Pages for notes, self explanatory. :)

Year at a glance, always useful.

I'm excited, hope you like it.  It's editable in Power Point, also comes in PDF and is only $6. 

Get it here:   Lesson Plan Book

Free Class schedule:  Schedule

Fraction Circle Practice

My first graders had some great practice with hands on fraction circles today.  Very simple to put together, and everyone gets to have some concrete experience with fractions.

1.  I cut out three circles of the same size but different colors for each student.
2.  Cut one in 1/2, one in 1/4's, and one in 1/3's.
3.  I cut out square cards of a different color and labeled them for each fraction.
4.  Laminate, and bag each set.
5.  Students assemble each circle and have to correctly label it.

Ant Colony Intruder: The Bumble Flower Beetle

I put together a really cool ant colony today for my class.  Awesome!  I found it at the Goodwill for $10 and it was totally worth it.  It has all these different pods connected by tubes.  I filled them with soil, grass, sand, and some moss.  For water I soaked cotton balls, and for food I did apples, and cinnamon toast crunch.

After a lot of looking I finally found a ton of ants under some bricks in my garden.  I must have looked about 6 years old out there with my spoon and tweezers.  I was able to find a few of the larvae, but boy those little guys are quick at hauling them away as soon as you get close.

I added the ants to the colony, the kids thought it was amazing.  About an hour or two later I glance at the main pod and there is this huge furry beetle crawling around in there!  Aghh! How did I miss him?  It was hard to tell if the ants were attacking it, or if they were attacking him.  I looked it up and I'm pretty sure its a bumble flower beetle.  A furry ground beetle that looks like a bee.  They are vegetarian, but I'm sure their jaws could do some damage to my poor little ants.   I am going to try to take him out tomorrow, but it won't be easy to disconnect it without the whole thing tumbling.   By the end of the day I didn't see many ants left in there.  Don't worry, I trucked out to my yard again and abducted some more.

School Bulletin Boards

I'm not much for bulletin boards.  Typically, I do them in the fall, and never get around to changing them.  This year, I was determined to be better about having fun boards that I could realistically get done!  The trick for me was getting them ready in the summer before school starts!  I used poster board, the letter cutters, and laminated what I could so the boards would be ready, and I could just add to them.  The best part is, I can re-use them next year yay!!!

September, Sailing Back to School Board:

The back was ready, all I had to add was the boats and names.  Oh yes, I used velcro to put them up.  Tape never seems to work.

Next is my fall board for October:  Who's hiding in the pumpkin patch?


Sorry about the glare, but as its laminated, its hard to get a good pic.  The kids made the pumpkins, I was planning on those hanging green things to be cute little curls made on a pencil, but they came out a little funny.  For their pictures I brought in a straw hat, a tiny bale of hay from the craft store and some face paint.  My plan was to do little scarecrow noses on them, but some of them had other requests and I just went with it.  One of them has a black widow on his nose!!

December, for Christmas we did "Joy to the World" with a caroling reindeer:



The kids had a ball with the glitter glue, decorating their trees.


January, "Our School is cool"  snow globe, and snowman board


First I had them pose with their coats on, pretending they were standing with a snowman.  Then I gave them the snowman, and little bits of colored paper for them to decorate their snowmen.  I also emptied out my hole punch so they could glue snowflakes on.  I covered them with plastic plates to look like snow globes.  I had a little trouble getting the plates to stay.  Tape and white glue did not work.  Hot glue did though, and they loved their globes!

Animal Habitats Project

We had a great time in our 1st and 2nd grade, learning about animal habitats.

We learned about 9 different biomes using picture cards with information about each habitat on the back.  Desert, Savanna, Prairie, Pond, Shoreline, Tundra, Ocean, Rainforest, and Forest.  Then we talked about how each animal belongs in a certain place.  A polar bear could never live in the desert!  I cut out pictures of animals, (about 3 for each one) and as a class we matched each animal to its correct biome.



Animal Habitats Bundle

We applied what we learned with an in class activity where students had pictures to color, cut out, and glue on to appropriate biomes.


They also completed a diorama project, and simple research page.  I assigned each student a habitat diorama to create out of a shoebox.  They also had to choose an animal from their habitat and complete a research sheet.

Here are the assignment pages:


Get assignment pages free here:  Project Assignment and Animal Research
They did such a great job, I was so proud of them.  One of my students had so much fun on his project, his mother told me he has been working on three more!



This is a tree frog in the rainforest biome.


This is the pond biome featuring a large mouth bass and a turtle.

This project was a seagull for the shoreline biome.  I love the real feathers!

These are a family of cheetahs in the Savanna.

This student brought in real hermit crabs for the shoreline biome.  So awesome!

This is the ocean biome.  Nice pictures and colors.

The tundra.  Lots of info for different plants and animals.

This is the forest biome.  I love the little squirrel in the tree, so cute!

This biome features dolphins in the ocean.

Great job on the rainforest, packed with plants and animals, the parrot is actually flying!  I was impressed with the fluffy clouds too.  Very cool!