National day on writing

Here’s some insight about what I gleaned from our writing activities from last Friday’s National Day on Writing.  We did two activities to honor the day – 1) one with teachers and  2) one with all students.

Fist, the activity centering around the teachers - Thank you teachers for your thought provoking responses to the prompt: One of my strong beliefs about writing is… As the poster hung in the lounge, I’m hoping that Pershing staff had a chance to notice and reflect on so many of our beliefs around writing – so similar and yet diverse as well.  It is powerful and enlightening to compare - and sometimes - contrast our beliefs.

Several teachers shared that they are “regular” writers and some touted how beneficial the practice of journaling is in their lives.   Let me encourage those teachers to share appropriate writing entries with their students and think aloud as you share so that students can see why you wrote what you did.  It’s this aspect of writing “writing to learn” and “writing to uncover” that can be a powerful springboard to motivate even the most reluctant writers.

Here’s our teacher poster -


Second, the activity centering around the students: Bazz –always on top of her game! – wanted all students to write on National Day on Writing.  And so, Meg, our literacy coach, took off with the idea of each student writing a note to someone around the idea “Sneak Attack of Kindness”; it seems clear that this idea has all the sound elements of a great writing lesson.  Kids were writing with a clear purpose – for a real life reason.  And, hopefully they wrote with the recipient of their note in mind.  Their notes needed to be understood by the happy person who received it.

I got sprung upon – here’s my note from Noah.  So priceless – I have a history with this young writer, and his note reminded me of how connected we are and will always be.

I plan to spring an attack on telling him how I valued his written note.  I will remind him of the power of writing to connect with others.

Here is Noah’s letter -



Have a great night.

Marty

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