Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Writing Letters to the President

Parents, has your son or daughter recently said something like this, "Sorry, I can't take out the trash. I have to go write a letter to the president."? It's actually true. Through the National Writing Project our class is participating in Letters to the Next President.

Let me bring us up to speed. Open House was great. Thank you to everyone for coming. It is always a pleasure to meet my students' parents.

Friday we began with brainstorming for our letters to the president.
Monday we worked on selecting an organizational pattern and drafting.
Tuesday I had to be out for a training. Reportedly all my students were wonderfully behaved in my absence. (Those of you who know me well might suspect sarcasm here, but it's true, the substitute reported excellent cooperation.)
Wednesday (today as I write this) we were going to have writing groups, but students clearly needed more time for drafting and some needed to select an alternate organizational pattern.
Thursday we will meet in writing groups and that may continue on Friday as well.

Yes, there is a great deal of writing going on. Last year a parent complained about the amount of writing students do in my class. She suggested I should have less writing because her daughter wasn't very good at writing. Obviously, I told her that if her daughter wasn't comfortable with writing then the girl really needed to be writing as much as possible, but I did make sure she got more support. Hopefully I will notice that you need more support, but if I don't please ask me.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good words.