Working on Writing

Over the past few weeks I have been busy blogging with my class on our class blog. We have had the pleasure of blogging with a few other classes in our Quadblogging project.
While this experience has been great for my kids and they have gained heaps from it, I think I have also learnt a lot from getting a glimpse into what other teachers are doing with their classes.
One of our buddy classes, Swanroom 9, have done some fantastic writing that has made me have a serious think about how I am teaching writing in my room.
They were given a story starter and then they had to write the setting description for the story. They had to write about what the character could see, hear and feel. What they came up with was fantastic.
Since listening to their story settings, my students have been inspired to write some of their own, and I have been inspired to rethink my teaching.
I have also managed to put in place many of the great ideas in the Daily 5 book (yes, it took me a while, but I LOVE it now that we are doing it).
I am going to use the 7-up Sentence idea (download my freebie sentence starters here) that I have seen all over the web to work on our writing in the next couple of weeks since we are nearing the end of term. Then, next term I am going to try to become a better writing teacher.
So, what is a 7-up sentence? Simply a way to encourage children to write more interesting sentences by making a sentence with seven words or more! Simple enough to work - I hope...
Students start with a three word sentence that is obviously boring. Then they alter it by adding adjectives, phrases, substituting synonyms etc to create a sentence that is worthy of publishing. I am going to introduce the idea to my students and then get them to write their sentences on our blog as replies to a series of comments.

Missing in Action?

Life seems so busy at the moment. With reports and student teachers and excursions and house sales, there always seems to be something to do.
Although I must say that having the student teachers I have had this term (Claire one day a week for 10 weeks and Melanie a four week block prac) my kids are noting that I could probably have a holiday! It is great to have someone else to organise the millions of things that go on in my classroom and do the planning, teaching etc but somehow I still manage to find enough to keep me busy all day!
They both finish up this week (Claire on Thursday and Melanie next Monday). It is going to be hard to know what to do without someone to bounce ideas off all the time.
Maybe I'll need to blog more again...