New Year's Resolution Writing

Alright, so the entire class isn't done, but half of them are!  The other half... most are almost done.  So I thought I would post about it!  We read the book (remember?  Squirrel's New Year's Resolution)  We talked about what resolutions were.  Then we brainstormed what we did well in 2011 and some things we would like to do better on in 2012.  They used this organizer to help them with each paragraph:

This is what I gave them to write on:

The next step with this organizer will be to have more yellow and red sentences in a paragraph, but starting with just one is OK with me!

After they were done with their final draft, we pasted it onto black construction paper and dazzled it up a bit.

We have sparkly New Year's resolutions!

I think they did great.  Don't you?

New Year's Resolutions

My fabulous winter break is over - welcome to the new year!  I've been spending my time with family and haven't really done anything about school. I did search the internet for some great ideas to use in the new year. Today I sent my husband on a mission to the library to find "Squirrel's New Year's Resolution"

I have seen a lot of posts about using it in the classroom so I thought I would check it out.  I read it to my daughter - she seemed to enjoy it.  She's two, so the discussions of resolutions didn't really happen. However, with my first graders it will!  We will talk about resolutions that we can make and ways we want to improve ourselves.  I also want them to think of some things they did well in 2011 - it shouldn't be all about what we need to work on.  The perfect writing project for our short week back.

My resolutions for this year?  My personal one is to feed my family healthier food.  My professional one is to really look at my centers and small groups to see what I can do to make them more meaningful.  From a management perspective the classroom runs smoothly, but I often feel like the center activities are sometimes filler and the small groups are just choral reading.  Ok, so it's not that bad, but I just want to improve it.  Suggestions are welcome!  I have two more...I am making a resolution to blog about all of the amazing work we do in my classroom :::big smiles::: and maybe, just maybe, start a store in Teachers Pay Teachers.  I also resolve to keep all of my resolutions.  The last one's a loftier goal, but hey, go big or go home.