Writing is all about expressing yourself. It can be quite therapeutic and it can also help you to clarify things that are on your mind. For your children, getting over the first step is the actual effort and challenge of putting letters on to paper and creating words and sentences. That is why it is so nice to have your…
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Ordinary Shelley’s Extraordinary Day
Yesterday was just an ordinary day. Okay, not really. It was our Christmas concert day. So were the students were really hyper? No. We were too busy. We were busy working on a new lesson about R.A.K. (Random Acts of Kindness.) Although we often do this as I teach Mindful Learning and focus a lot on social learning, today was…
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Using Writing to Teach Kindness
Thank you for joining me for Writing Sundays #12. We have given our Interactive Writer’s Notebooks a little rest until January so that we can focus on Winter and Christmas writing and learning and writing about kindness. In order to teach my students about kindness this season I started out by having them explore their own best memories. I did…
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Snowmen at Night Art Project
If you are on the lookout for a book and art lesson for a Christmas or winter activity, look no further. This week I was inspired by the book Snowmen at Night. I am sure you all have seen it but if you haven’t, it is priceless! In this story, snowmen have fun at night when the children have all…
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Writing Leads and Presentation
Welcome back to my 11th instalment of Writing Sundays. I’m so glad you are here. This week we worked on “leads”. That is, we practiced how to start a story. What great first sentences can you use to “hook” the reader into reading your story? The kids had fun with these! I began by walking over to the bookshelf and…
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Character Development Through Writing
This past week was all about character development. Teachers often find teaching students how to develop their characters, quite difficult; especially with primary students. Character descriptions in stories are not detailed, seem contrived and don’t allow the reader to visualize. Starting with drawing and partner work is a great way to begin teaching students all about creating interesting characters. We…
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