pen pals Archives - Ideas by Jivey

Yippee!!! It’s SATURDAY! Today, that means sleeping in (check!), fall weather (check!), football (just a few hours away), and of course, my BBB Joanne‘s linky party!

I am just as excited about what I’m sharing with you today as my kids!!! My teammate and BBBIRL (Best Bloggy Buddy In Real Life) Gary’s (AKA Scrappy Guy) and my class are pen pals with Holly’s classes (from Fourth Grade Flipper)!!! We wrote our first letters this week! Gary added the awesome Atlanta book and the fact cards about our city, Lawrenceville.

When I originally told my kids the news, there was not one student who didn’t gasp, cheer, or clap! They were soooooo excited. We talked about how our pen pal would become our friend this year, and we needed to make sure we told them all the important, fun things about ourselves that would make someone WANT to be our friend! I think they really did a good job! There were a few kids I had to discourage from putting their phone number and home address. LOL

If you are wanting pen pals, blogging is the BEST way to get to know people from all over the country (and world!). When Holly first blogged about pen pals, there were some others looking for pen pals, too! They left their info in the comments on Holly’s Pen Pal Post. If you are interested, go check it out, and add your info there if you want! I promise your kids will have a BLAST with it!

Now, a little motivator for YOU- a giveaway! Check out Life In Middle School’s 2 Year Blogging Anniversary for a chance to win some awesome prizes!

Hope you all have a FABULOUS weekend! :o)

I’m so excited to link up with my BBB Holly for Tried It Tuesday!!

Speaking of Holly, you might remember that my class and Gary’s class are pen pals with her class… and my kids have been DYING to get letters back (they wrote the first letter to her class). I wish I could post the pic of their faces when I told them the box I was holding was from their pen pals!! They SCREAMED and squealed with excitement! I sent the picture to Holly though, so she could show her class how happy my class was!!

If you have the opportunity to connect with someone for your kids to have pen pals, I’m telling you, it is SOOOO worth it! :o)

Ok, now for what I’m REALLY here for! I want to share the way I am teaching poetry this year! (Apparently Holly and I are sharing a brain!! LOL! Be sure to read her post, too!) We are doing close reads of poems to analyze and summarize them. We started with Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening because it was one of the first poems in Love That Dog (read more about how I’m using that here). I projected the poem on the board and they also glued it down into their notebook. We read it together, then read each stanza and discussed the feelings and visuals we were getting as we read it.

I had the students write a summary afterwards. I wanted them to tell me what they think was happening using evidence from the poem. I think they really did a great job, especially since this was our first go at it!

This next student is one of my ELL students, so I was sooooo excited with what he was able to write!!

The kids were so funny when I read the beginning of Love That Dog to them today and they heard Jack talk about this poem. They got so excited to know more about the poem and seem to “understand it better” than Jack did. 😛

Don’t forget to come back and link up tomorrow for Workshop Wednesday to share your ideas for teaching FRACTIONS in Math Workshop! You could talk about manipulatives, books, lesson ideas, activities, games… really anything you do when you teach fractions! :o) See you then!

Sparking Student Motivation: PEN PALS!!

Tried It Tuesday: Analyzing Poetry {and pen pals!}

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