Thanksgiving Write the Room & Publishing Kinder Writing

Okay so I have to start this post by telling you about my crazy news. I found out I'm getting a subpoena next week to appear in court! Apparently I'm supposed to testify in a hearing between the parents of a former student and their home school district. Thank goodness for the super friendly and thoughtful paralegal who called and told me ahead of time before I had a panic attack about "being served" in front of my class without any warning. It seems like my part isn't really a big deal, but it still makes me nervous to have to testify in court. I'm hoping I at least get an extra day off out of it. Thankfully another staff member (my friend) got the same call, and hopefully we'll get to keep each other company in the court room. We're both secretly hoping they say "you've been served!" like they do on Law & Order when they bring the papers next week. Hehehe.

Okay...now on to our regularly scheduled blogging...

I introduced the first part of our literacy centers today. My kids LOVE Write the Room! One thing I really love about this one is the way I set up the cards and student response form. I broke the lists into thirds so the cards have 3 different picture options (pilgrim hat, cornucopia, or turkey). Aside from the super awesome fact that the kids instantly apply their holiday vocabulary, this also makes recording easier because I put 3 different sets of pictures on the recording sheet. When the kids reach the last 2-3 words it can be confusing to figure out which ones they have completed or not. By having the pictures it helps us narrow it down to "one more turkey word" then the student can look around the room for only those pictures to find the last word. My favorite part was the school tour that came through as my kids were doing this activity. They were super impressed :)

Hard at work copying words from walls and bookcases

If you want this little gem of an activity, just go to my TPT store.

Today was also my first attempt at having my kinder kids publish on the computers. It was an even better success than I ever could have dreamed! One kid honestly refused to go to PE because he wanted to finish. It took some convincing in the form of me showing him the flashing red battery light to explain the computer would probably die before he finished anyway. I was shocked at how hard they worked and how little help they needed from me. I was also able to see which letters they could match from their lowercase draft copy to the uppercase letters on the keyboard. My favorite kid quote of the day came while I was setting up the computers for Kinder while also verbally giving instructions to the 1st/2nd guys. One little stared at me doing this and said, "Miss Lisa, you are one busy woman!!" Tomorrow we will finish typing, print, and illustrate. Cute pictures of the final projects will come soon!