Writer's Workshop, Diary of a Turkey, and a Giveaway!

I don't know about any other teachers, but I am feeling the rush to get things done before Thanksgiving break. We have been busy already this week.

One area I am definitely lacking as a teacher is writing. The school I student taught at did not have a writing curriculum, and only one of my college classes even slightly focused on writing. So needless to say, I came in blind. I have been reading and researching like a crazy person to try to figure out the best way to teach writing to my kiddos. I have been trying to incorporate Writer's Workshop into my classroom--and let me just say, I L-O-V-E it! I can definitely see how much better my kids are writing. We starting by investigating pattern books, and then they wrote their own. We had our first published book earlier this week, and it was great to see how proud she was of herself! She got to sit in Ms. Cranfill's read aloud chair to share her book with everyone else. It was so exciting!

We had read the book Who Has These Feet? together, so that's where her idea came from. Her book turned out adorable!

Since I had to go to a meeting today, I needed to come up with an activity that my students could do independently, and would take a decent amount of time. Since we are getting in the Thanksgiving spirit, we wrote our own book, Diary of a Turkey. We have read Diary of a Spider and Diary of a Worm before. Great books! Then they wrote their own, but from a turkey's perspective. They didn't all stay 100% on the turkey's perspective, but for me not being there to redirect, they did pretty good!

{The turkey is showing off for the ladies and his name is Carson.}

{He got the ladies to love him. Now he is a turkey movie star and he is famous.}

Too funny! 

I've mentioned before how much I love giveaways. I'm convinced that I will win one someday. (It must run in my family--my sister is convinced she will win the lottery!) There is a great gift card giveaway at Granny Goes to School. 

Go check it out for a chance to win some great gift cards!