It is that time of year, our school year is coming to an end! This is a great time to get your kiddos writing and reflecting on their year. I teach third grade at a low income school. Therefore many of my kiddos have trouble seeing the bright side of things. This year it was my ultimate goal to teach my students how to find the good things in their lives. This is a great writing prompt for that!
First we started by reading the book Something Beautiful
This book is about a young girl who sees a lot of things that are not so wonderful around her. She goes around asking her closest friends and family what they find beautiful in their life.
We had so GREAT conversations while reading this book! Then we talked about being positive and seeing things in different ways. I began to tell my students this story.
One time the power went out at our house in the middle of the night. It was in the middle of winter and the weather was bad and it got cold in our house quickly. I have a 2 year old daughter so we couldn't stay at a cold house. We decided to pack up a few things and head to grandma's and grandpa's house. It was in the middle of the night and we all had to work the next day so, we were not excited about leaving the house. When we got to grandma's and grandpa's we were greeted with a warm blanket and a crib for my baby. Instead of being crabby and upset about the situation we made it fun by playing games and then making breakfast as a family in the morning. OF COURSE we were exhausted the next day BUT it was worth a great night!
When I told my story I was very dramatic and the kids had many stories to go with it :).
We went around and talked about somethings we find beautiful in our life. Some kiddos were saying only people so we discussed how it doesn't always have to be people it could be anything you really like.
We began the writing process by brainstorming
Then we moved onto prewriting
Finally we went onto writing.
Now something that we have really tried incorporating this year was peer editing. I love peer editing but I found it difficult to explain and mandate. If you notice in the writing sheet above there is a space for comments. This is for peer editing! I also have two different peer editing sheets to go along. The peer editing sheets help guide students in making sure their partner has everything in their paper.
When we were all finished editing we produced our final paper!
There is a rubric included as well!
I like numbers so I have plenty of room to add comments!
Later we presented our papers. It was a bonding time for my third graders and we all really enjoyed it!!
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