30 Days of Thanks

My fourth graders have been having a blast with writing in November. In addition to the regular writing lesson, they have also been writing thank-you notes everyday. Each day I introduce a new way of writing a thank you. We started with the standard friendly letter, a card, and list, and then I asked them to draw a picture to give to someone they are thankful for. They were asked to use words and pictures in their thank you.  We have also written acrostic poems, stories and today we tried our hand at song writing.

I have been soooo impressed with their writing! They have been eating this up. When we wrote the acrostic poem they were running around the classroom tearing through dictionaries, checking their thesaurus, referring to posters in the room, and constantly checking in to make sure their words made sense. It was so exciting because sometimes writing can be a bit, well,  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  There was so much vocabulary usage, it was a very wonderful writing time. Writing the song was also a great experience. As they worked today I could hear tunes from all over the classroom as they tried out their new songs. This definitely wasn't for everyone and I got some funny looks when I asked them to write a song, but they tried it and some were impressed at how easy it was. 

Now that I have introduced each type of writing, and they have tried them all out, they are free to pick the ones they would like to use for the remainder of November. The kids have been delighted to receive  thank-you notes from their peers, and a few moms and dads got some very nice notes as well. Writing my thank-you notes has felt great, I love sneaking into rooms and leaving them for the recipient to find. 

Now, what to write about for December?!?!?