Writing in the New Year

We "brought in the New Year" with some writing in the classroom.  We were working so hard on paragraph structure and writing before the break, I didn't want to wait a minute before we started back at it again.

I used a writing prompt from a New Year's package created by my friend, Mor.  You can see her newest resource, "Dear Future Me", here.  The students had to choose three items to place inside a time capsule that would remind them of 2012.  It was a great activity because we got to talk about symbols, and how items can symbolize thoughts or feelings.

Together we discussed how the writing related to our learning goal, and then we co-created our set of success criteria.  I typed the success criteria as the students were coming up with them, and had the handout projected onto the smartboard as I was typing.

Students went through the pre-writing process by brainstorming ideas, writing their details (2 sentences for each item), and then crafting their introduction and conclusion sentences.  After rough drafts were finished, the students starting publishing them on their netbooks (have I mentioned lately how much I LOVE those netbooks!!!).  More than half of the students have finished their good copies, and I'm hoping the rest will finish tomorrow.

To go along with our writing, I decided to whip up a little goal-setting craftivity.  I tried to make it look like a fire-cracker for New Year's Eve.  Students had to come up with three different goals (one for school, one for home, and one of their own choice).  The goals were written on paper strips and stapled inside a tube of rolled up construction paper.  We added a couple of curly sparkled pipe cleaners to look like sparks.  I hope it looks a little bit like a firecracker. ;)

We only had a few minutes to work on the craftivity today, so only one students has finished so far.  But, I was excited to start setting up our new bulletin board, so this is what we have so far:

Hope you're having a GREAT start to the New Year! 

Happy Tuesday!  I'm watching my family take down Christmas as I'm writing this ... my husband is becoming increasingly frustrated with the little ones "helping".  Hee hee hee.  

Jen