Day...

Oh, what a long day it seemed to be. We accomplished a lot in the classroom, but I am most thoroughly impressed with their writing prompts. We are only studying prompts for two weeks and will try our hand with poetry when we come back, but I see some great improvements in the writers. Some of the writers are dabbling with tag lines other than said, using adverbs (sadly, angrily, happily), and using ending punctuation correctly (for the most part). They were creative and after having read Boy Writers by Ralph Fletcher, I am not going to talk to one of my boys about using the word poop in his writing. Honestly, it's kind of funny and gross and I can just imagine the grossness in my mind as he was having it flung by monkeys. He's using action...

However, when I was reading the prompts tonight, I had to laugh. My quirky one, that had tipped over my student teacher's coffee, used "I did not see that coming" in his writing. It brought a smile to my face. And after having heard almost every teacher comment on how crazy their class was today, it was nice to at least see growth in their writing (since it didn't happen in their listening today).

BTW, one small funny...I was explaining what cauliflower ear was and how you get it. (We're reading The Tale of Despereaux.) After telling them how wrestlers often get it, my quirky one jumps in with, "Like Jacob wrestling with the angel." (from the Old Testament) He must have just had that lesson in Sunday School.