Wednesday, April 11, 2007

First day back

Whew! I'm glad to get it out of the way. It actually went quite well!

I did decide to start with the writing, about an Ideal Vacation. The kids came up with some really creative stuff! There was lots of travel, and lots of purchases: video games, fancy cars, islands, malls, sneaker stores, and even the purchase of all of Europe!

One boy was writing about having a fort, with mercenaries and dangerous traps, and I said, Oh, you want to be Indiana Jones. He looked blank, so I asked the whole class who had ever seen an Indiana Jones movie. Only about five kids raised their hands! I shook my head. Poor kids, missing out on quality adventure films!

A boy in another class wanted to buy a mansion full of girls. Heh.

I think, overall, it's kind of a fun twist on a common writing assignment. There was plenty of excited chatter among the students about what they were going to do.

None of the classes were able to finish a complete draft. So that was their assignment, and I'm hoping they will actually do it. Tomorrow I will show them some info about the six traits, using a great rubric we got at the last UFT workshop. They will evaluate their completed draft and then create a new, better draft. If there is time, I'll let them do some peer evaluation, to get more feedback and suggestions. We'll see how that goes tomorrow, and I'll decide if we should continue with this on Friday or move to poetry.

What would you do on an ideal vacation, if time and money were no matter?
I would buy a Notting Hill bookstore, then buy a new hybrid car and drive it around the country, and then relax in the Greek islands.

How about you?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My ideal vacation would involve a 24 pack of Jolt cola, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, my favorite Pi t-shirt, Hawaiian shorts, and a space shuttle. I would take a space shuttle ride to the MIR space station, where I would drink Jolt non stop so that I don't fall asleep from staring out the space view window, all while eating a PB&J here and there. PERFECT VA-KAY!