Thursday, November 10, 2005

Today was good. Another student gave me an apple. I finally got my portfolio edition of The Mysteries of Harris Burdick in the mail yesterday so today I had them do a writing assignment on the pictures. It's pretty cool because it has all the pics from the book but they're bigger and on loose paper so you can take each one out. I hung them up on the board today and had them choose one and write a story about it. I also decided I would write a story about one too. That seemed to spur their curiosity at the very least. I chose the one called "Under the Rug." Actually I didn't tell them to write a story, I told them to "Write something about it...whatever you want." Some kids thought they would get away with just writing a few sentences and then they'd be done. When they brought those to me I would just say "Great! Now choose another one and write about it," and so on.

I also had them do the Weekly Reader exercise again today where they read an article and then report on it as if they're the evening news. Even after emphasizing how everyone in the group needs to participate equally in the presentation I still had things like one kid just laying there under some pillows doing nothing at all during the presentation about Mt. Everest. Afterwards I said "Wait, wait...what did Gordo do?" They said "He was the mountain." Good job, Gordo. Best mountain ever. I think you have a promising career doing anything that involves laying motionless.

I don't know what to do about these kids weekly writing assignment. They have this writing journal where they write about a different positive character trait every week. Many of them just write the same, repetitive, unimaginative stuff every week and I know they have more ability than that. They're just being lazy. I wish I knew a good way to get them excited about writing in that thing.

Well, I'm out. Later.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home