Thanks for reading my last post in the series of Writing Sundays. I hope these posts have given you some good ideas about writing. I enjoy debriefing about my trials and tribulations as I teach writing.
If you’ve been reading lately, you’ll know we have been doing a lot of research on penguins. I have been using my Just Chillin’ and the students were immersed in penguins every day. We watched live webcams, we watched informational clips about penguins, we read books (both fiction and non-fiction) Each day, the skills learned helped students to scaffold their learning. (We even did some penguin problems in Math.) Everything seemed to just “click” and students learned heaps!
I used two things to assess the learning for our penguin studies: one was my Penguin Perspectives writing set. (This is fiction writing but with a great non-fiction twist!) Here, students chose 1 or more writing prompts to “write in role”.
Students wrote as though they were the penguin and creatively explained things like: how daddy had a big job to look after them when they were born:
… all about their home
… how they hunted for food.
The second method of assessment was a “mini-book” about penguins. I don’t know about you but I just love anything MINI. So do the kiddos!
You just have to LOVE the detail these students put into their books in progress! Check out the back of one of these books! Price and bar code included.
It has been so much fun learning about penguins. This week we will be starting our unit on polar bears.
Happy Sunday everyone!
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