All the buzz...

This week we began our week with artifacts from home. I sent home a letter last week to parents asking for students to bring in some special "things." We were ready Monday morning with our gallon size bags in hand to share what we brought. We got with a couple of friends and shared our baggies, each person valuing everything within. We photocopied pictures, did rubbings of several special artifacts, and then we placed them within our notebooks. Some students immediately had some things to write about and so that work began. Some of us sat back and began planning some stories that we would be writing in the near future. We were all the buzz...
Yesterday, another student modeled her list of story ideas that she had written on Monday. She talked about the piece that she wrote describing her picture but how that picture of her family planted even more seed stories for her to write. Many students spent yesterday planting seeds for some short story narratives.
Today, I pulled my piece about putting up Christmas at our house out and onto a large sheet of chart paper. I modeled for students what a "sensory" writing would look like. I used a web to display the different senses and then wrote some ideas for that piece. I encouraged students to use the web to help with preplan writing. I was thrilled to see some of them writing like this today during independent writing time.
Tomorrow, we will be discussing where to put periods. I have some students placing them at the end of every line in their notebook. Hopefully, I can model effectively proper placement of periods.
It is amazing to watch them grow. They are tremendous writers, living writerly lives.