CeLeBRAtiON

CeLEbrATION!!!!  You might ask..."What are you celebrating in your classroom?"  After each of our writing units, we CELEBRATE!!!  Not because we are finished with a unit, but we celebrate the GREAT work each child put forth in writing their pieces.  This unit was particularly fabulous because the students spent time editing their pieces.  YES I SAID EDITING!  First graders can edit and are taught to do so with a writing partner.  With their partner they follow the fix it up strategies on the anchor chart below:

For this particular published piece, the students went through their writing folders and reread their pieces.  They then sorted out their pieces into two piles:  hard to read and easy to read.  They gave me their hardest to read piece and then chose their favorite easy to read piece to publish with their writing partners.  I then created posters for them with their chosen pieces.   We used these posters to have a walking museum.  Students walked through and read each others pieces; both the hard to read and the easy to read pieces.  We then DISCUSSED why each hard to read piece was chosen.  Answers included, the words were squished together, there were no periods, words were misspelled, etc.  We then compared the difference between the two pieces (hard to read and published piece).  Afterwards we had great snacks and drinks.  THANK YOU to those individuals who DONATED our snacks for our celebration.  They were greatly enjoyed by the class.