Braids and Two More Journals

One day this past week, one of our friends was having a rough day. She was having a hard time getting to her assignment. I kept reminding her to "get busy". Then she cried great big crocodile tears and told me she missed her mommy. I'm a sucker when it comes to my first graders. I have to wipe away the tears and make everything all right. No sad faces in Room 5!

I had her come behind my desk to sit on a stool that I keep back there for these types of "emergencies". I gave her a clipboard, pencil, and writing page and told her to get to work. Then...I braided her hair! When she stopped writing, I stopped braiding. By the end, she was smiling and so was I!!

GUESS WHO???

GUESS AGAIN...

...and one more guess

BAILEY!

(Look at that sweet little happy face!)

On another note...

Alex finished his first journal.

And so did EMMA!!

My Little Writers

My favorite thing to read in all the world is my students' journals! It's true! The writing is open and honest. The pictures are awesome and with the picture's help I can always (usually?) tell exactly what was written. I encourage the little ones to "guess and go" when writing in their journals. It is so important for them to get those fun ideas down on paper without worry about how to spell it correctly...we'll get to that later. But, for now, just WRITE!

I tell them I have "magic teacher eyes" that can read anything they write. I think I may have been given a gift to do so because, I sometimes amaze myself! Over the years I have read some pretty amazing journal entries. Every year I am every bit as excited over the things they say and how much their writing improves. That's one reason I love my job so very much!

There is always that first journal entry where a student writes about his/her teacher.

This is Aurora. This was her entry about me.

I encourage the students to ask me a question for me to answer right in the book.

My answer was: Green Eggs and Ham

Now, look closely at my outfit Aurora drew in her picture!

Now look at what I was wearing that day:

Pretty good job eh?

This is Emma working very hard on her picture.

So cute!

Alex did a fantastic job!

Alan drew the cutest ant. The ant was yelling "get out!"

This is Janey.

She really WAS writing.

This was her writer's thinking time! :)