Open windows

The most seriously exciting thing is happening in Phoenix: it's cooling down! The nights are wonderfully cool. I have been able to have the windows open the last two nights, and I am really enjoying that. I was really nervous about how hard it would be to get my students back into the routine of school after a week off, but they were wonderful today!

We had a great day and, in my opinion, had the best writing lesson to date. It was fun and I saw a huge improvement in the amount of detail in the writing. The whole lesson was just fun for me, too. All I did was say "Oh my goodness, I had the BEST time during Fall Break! I can't wait to write all about it and share with you!" Then I wrote "I had a great time during Fall Break!" on the overhead, put the pen down and said "I'm done." My kids just stared at me. Not a peep. They were speechless. I reached over to turn the projector off and one student yelled "WAIT!" I looked at him and said "What's wrong?" and he said "That's not it! That's not enough." To which I replied, "Well, that's what I wrote."

I acted like there was nothing wrong with that one sentence. Suddenly all the students were, for lack of a better description, freaking out and telling me that I hadn't written enough and I had to write more. I just looked at all of them, put my hands in my pockets, shrugged and said "I don't know what else to write. That's all I have to say about it." They insisted that I write more, so I asked them what they wanted to know. They peppered me with questions: "Who did you see?" "What did you do?" "Where did you sleep?" "What did you eat?" "How did you get there?" "How long were you gone?" "What did you wear?" "What interesting things happened to you?" I looked at them - feigning complete shock - and said, "You didn't get that from the sentence I wrote?!" They yelled "NOOO!" so I wrote the answers to their questions; we read the new, detailed paragraph together, and I asked them if that was better. They said "Oh, yes!" and I turned off the projector, got serious, and said "Sometimes in your writing, I have lots of questions like that. Today I want you to think about all the things you wanted to know about what I was going to write, and answer those questions in your own writing."

Amazingly, they did! I have never seen some of them write that much before. It was so much fun! They were writing quietly for over 15 minutes! That was the best part of my day, hands down. Off to sleep... ♥