The first few weeks of school are always interesting.  The students are trying to learn the personality of the teacher, while the teacher is trying to learn the strengths of the students.  This often involves some type of writing activity, where the teacher can gain a writing sample from her new students without the anxiety (or added marking workload) of a formal literacy assessment.  Here are three ideas of writing samples that introduce the students to you and that also make good bulletin board displays:

Autobiography Poem:  I first came across this version of the poem when I was a student teacher attending a writing workshop at my university.  However, I have since found several examples on the Internet.  The poem is 10 lines, with the first line being the student’s first name and the last line being his or her last name.  In between, the student answers basic questions about themselves (ex. what they like, hate, are afraid of, dreams, etc.)  I usually model how to complete the poem by writing one about myself for the class.  I’ve also used this as a biography poem later in the year, where students take a historical figure or a character from a novel and complete the poem to demonstrate their understanding of that person.

Puzzle Pieces: There will be several students with different strengths in the new classroom.  Divide the students into groups of four, and give each group a large paper with four connected puzzle pieces drawn in thick black pen.  Each group works to cut apart the puzzle pieces.  The students then decorate their pieces, and in each corner write a sentence explaining their strengths and how they could help other students throughout the year.  Examples of the sentences include: “I really like Math, and I could help you with your Math homework”, “I’m an organized person, so I can help you clean your binder”, or “I love playing video games, so I could help you beat that final level.”  After students have completed and coloured their puzzle pieces, they meet back into their groups to share their strengths and glue the puzzle pieces back together on construction paper.  You can then display the completed puzzle pieces.

Name Acrostic: Students write their name vertically down the page.  They then think of words that describe them that start with each letter of their name.  The lesson becomes a review of good describing words, or adjectives.  I can involve the entire class in thinking about a good describing word for the unfortunate student who has a “y” or a “z” in their name.  I usually have an example to show the students with my own name, and have the students illustrate and colour their acrostics for a quick bulletin board display.

Please share if you have another writing idea that we can all add to our filing cabinets.

I come from a family of all girls, so I’m not always used to the concerns and actions of the boys in my classroom.  Getting married has helped somewhat, because I can always ask my husband things like, “Is it normal for four boys to jump and try to hit the top of the door in quick succession as they leave the classroom?” (answer: yes, yes it is).  Therefore, I sometimes try to take the opportunity to find out more about how boys learn.  Last November I attended a workshop by Diana Cruchley, an experienced teacher, in an attempt to learn how we can encourage boys to become better writers and enjoy writing in the process.  I liked how she started off by explaining what type of environment boys need in the classroom, and how we could think of some of their needs when we are planning our lessons.  These needs included a low-threat competitive environment, a chance for leadership and autonomy, an opportunity to make choices, and a chance for movement and humour.  She then launched right into a variety of activities that we could use in the classroom.  Here is a sampling of some of the great ideas she presented:

• The Overhead Dash: Choose 20 vocabulary words from any classroom unit, and make sure students have had an opportunity to go over the meanings of these words.  Place 10 of the words on an overhead.  Students are in partners, with one facing away from the words.  One student gives clues, and the other student tries to guess the words.  Students get approximately 2 minutes to play, and then they can reverse their roles to play a second round with the other 10 words.  You can set up your own rules regarding the clues.  This gives low threat competition, and the students are practicing their vocabulary.  I tried this in my class with our 20 spelling words, and both the boys and girls were engaged.  When I asked if this is a game we would be interested in playing again, one boy piped up, “I’m up for playing it again today, if you’re interested.”

• Using the tangram story Grandfather Tang as a model, students create their own story about the characters that they create using tangram pieces.  For many grades, this covers both writing and math learning outcomes.  As well, the boys are given some movement, and you could make it into a low threat competition by seeing how long it takes the students to create each tangram in the book.

• Reversing Ideas:  Have students write a paragraph explaining clearly how “not” to do something.  Examples are: 10 Ways to Die on the Fraser River Gold Rush, How Not to Build a Pyramid, or How Not to Present a Speech.  This gives the students an opportunity to add some humour to what might be a boring descriptive paragraph assignment.