« October 2011 | Main | December 2011 »
Every Wednesday we challenge you to pick up your pen and indulge your author self!
Today's prompt: Write an newspaper article about one event over this past weekend. Make sure to include an eye-catching headline and WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, and WHY!
Feel free to share your stories in the comment section below!
This Fall at Crocker Highlands, we are creating our own short novels using curriculum from National Novel Writing Month's Young Writers Program (you can find out more about this awesome program at http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/).
Cameron describes her villain, Siddysuehoo, as "looks like a toddler that wears too small diapers and has a beard and long hair." Siddysuehoo's greatest weaknesses are "pick axes, lumber jacks and ballerinas."
Our students at Sloat recently had the privilege of having poet Zack Rogow pay them a visit. The students were asked to prepare some questions ahead of time. They came up with some great ones including:
Every Wednesday we challenge you to pick up your pen and indulge your author self!
Today's prompt:
If you were a magic eraser, what would you erase?
Share your ideas with us in the Comment section below!
Take a look at some of the fabulous work our 2nd and 3rd grade students are cooking up in their after school classes at Walt Disney Elementary in San Ramon!
From Aarushi C:
*This excerpt came from a free-write that began “They only come out at night.”
They only came out at night. It’s the shiny beautiful stars. I look at the stars and see an A+. I saw a big fat bear. It looked like a dragon—big tail, a nose, and big feet. It was blocking a castle. A princess was on the top tower next to the one thousand towers. It was in the middle. The princess was wearing a blue dress and a purple crown in her long blonde hair. It looked like Rapunzel’s hair, except that it didn’t glow like hers. There was a white horse. Her name was Princess. She also had a silver crown.
From Freyana S:
*This excerpt came from an activity where students observed and described everyday objects to an alien.
Hi, Alien! Do you know about books? You know, books help you learn, or they are really fun.
From Isabella C:
*This excerpt is from an activity called “From BLAH to TA-DAH” where students take a mundane sentence and rewrite it, or make a story out of it by adding descriptive details. Isabella's sentence was "The babysitter was angry."
My babysitter looked angry when my sister ate all the pizza. My sister was embarrassed. When we went to bed, my babysitter was in a bad mood so she took away my teddy bear. I was sad.
The next day I went to school and one of the bullies was mean to me. When I got home I was crying. My babysitter said, “What’s the matter?” I told her somebody was mean to me.
Finally, my big brother got home. He looked hot. He ran like 1,492 laps. Then we went to bed. My babysitter said, “Here’s your teddy bear back.”
I said, “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry I took it away from you.”
Then I went to bed. The next day we went to school. When we went home our babysitter made chocolate pudding and we tasted it. Then we went to bed. And she was gone the next day. My parents were back. I was so happy.
*The next two excerpts are from a free-write that began “There was a strange noise, and when I opened the door…”.
From Jake D:
There was a strange noise, and when I opened the door I saw a lot of ... zombies, Scream, cheetahs, mummies, dragons, skeletons, witches, vampires, crazy-looking people, and invisible people, too. They were all creepy...I ran into my house real fast.
From Kailey C:
There was a strange noise, and when I opened the door I saw water with alligators and crocodiles, and snakes.
From Kara L:
*This excerpt came from an activity where students took a simple sentence and turned it into a paragraph or story with lots of descriptive details.
Simple sentence: Mr. Apple was very mad.
Mr. Apple was mad because he had to move. When he walked into his new room, Mr Apple was really mad because his room was the worst. It had pink flowers that smelled like garbage, and a princess castle bed, and his room had lots of cracks in the walls...
From Keith H:
*This excerpt is from an activity called “What can you hear?” where the class sat outside and took notes on everything they could hear around them. Those notes were then used as details to include in a story or poem.
I heard a crow, a loud crow. But, I was saying, “Go away, crow!” It didn’t go away. I was wondering why the crow wasn’t scared of me.
From Maison E:
*This excerpt came from an activity to encourage detailed description. Students observed and then described everyday objects as if they were describing them to an alien.
We began by making lists of our observations.
Backpack
Lunchbox
From Nathan M:
*This excerpt came from an activity where students wrote a poem by describing one memory or a collection of memories.
I
remember
I made a paper
plane.
And seeing a
bunch of late ducks flying
in the air. And having a
water gun fight in the summer. And having
a party in the jungle. We danced in the jungle.
And playing games. And playing with
Teddy and Toto. And playing in the sand! And
Playing in the snow and doing snowboarding!!!
From Olivia H:
*This excerpt is from an activity called the “I remember poem” where students chose one memory to write about, or make a poem out of lots of different memories. This was done on the first day of class as a way to start writing and get to know each other.
I Remember
I was in Six Flags when it was summer. I went on the best ride ever. I remember screaming so loud that two boys were looking at me like was crazy.
I remember looking at the biggest ride in Six Flags and wanting to go there.
I also remember my mom saying, “No, it is too big and dangerous because it goes upside down.” But it was OK because I got to see penguins. It was the best day ever.
Do any of you follow KQED's MindShift? It's a great site that offers everything new in learning, technology, and all the new factors that influence education.
Check out this great article on how we can better incorporate passion-based learning into the classroom.
Instead of rewarding mindless obedience and memorization, Kimberly Vincent argues that we should be encouraging initiative and show kids more relevance in their studies.
What do you think of her passion-based learning tenants? How do you want to see the future of your child's education?
In "You Read it Here First!" we feature writing from students in our creative writing classes. When these young authors become well known writers, you can say you read them here first!
This week's work features letters from our students writing to the very materials they use to make letters!
Every week we bring you a new interesting word and challenge you to make good use of it! Today's word of the day is...
counterfeit - adjective
fake; made in imitation of something valuable
For example, it is a crime to create counterfeit money. Warm your fingers up today and write a short story that revolves around a counterfeit object...Feel free to share with us in the Comments section below!
Every Wednesday we challenge you to pick up your pen and indulge your author self!
Ever seen a bad situation coming ahead of time? Here's a good one: Write from the perspective of a stack of paper next to a paper shredder. Share your best story with us in the Comment section below!
Subscribe to our RSS feed!
