Writer's Workshop Story Starters

My little friends can spend an entire Writer's Workshop just thinking of story ideas. Does that happen to your class also? I am not a fan of staged writing prompts from the teacher, so getting them to pull from their own experiences can be difficult. That is why I send home a special letter at the beginning of the year. Read on to learn more and grab it for free!

Hi Friends! Sarah from Mrs B's First Grade here today!

Writing is *probably* my favorite time of day with  my firsties. However, when I have one friend that spends the whole time not even writing a word, I get very frustrated! Please tell me I am not alone...

I encourage my students to be "Writing Factories" and turn out page after page during our workshop time. I do not give my students single pages of paper. Instead, they get several pages stapled together so that they are encouraged to write more and more. Does it work? Yes!

So, how do I help those friends that do not know what to write? Well, one way is to have my parents help me at the beginning of the school year. I hand out a letter during our Meet the Teacher night and ask parents to list 12 story titles that their child could turn into a story. I always love reading what they come up with.

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It's Our Birthday! {A Blog Hop and Giveaway!}

The Primary Punchbowl is celebrating our first birthday and we have a ton of fun in store for you!

You can grab fun celebration freebies from many of The Punchbowl contributors.  Click here and head over to The Tales of a Sassy Teacher to get your next freebie!

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Student Data Binders

Hey everyone!

I'm LOVING third grade so far. It's been an adjustment but let me tell ya, I made the correct choice when I switched not only grade levels but also districts. We are finishing the first quarter this week Thursday and have a four day weekend for Columbus Day. I'm excited for the weekend but sad to know a quarter of the year is already in the books.

With the switch of schools and districts a lot more has been placed in my lap. It's all been for the better. We are requiring the students to not only set their own goals but to track them. Each student in our school has their own DATA binder.

In my classroom, I have the students track their spelling tests, reading selection tests from our curriculum, Accelerated Reader tests, math facts and math tests. Yes, I realize that is a lot to track but we do certain ones on certain days. It only takes a few minutes each day for students to fill in their new data and color in their bar graphs.

I have a meeting with each of my students weekly to discuss their goals for the week. During this conference we discuss their prior weeks goals and their goals for the following week. These are the mini goals they set for themselves.

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