Monday, September 18, 2017

Beginning of the Year Letters

One of my favorite beginning of the school year activities is for students to write a letter to their future selves.

I review components of a friendly letter and offer minimal support.  I use this as a chance to see their background skills in writing and guide my future mini-lessons.

The letters are pretty enlightening.  Yes, I get to see their writing skills and yes, it's clear to see which teachers didn't really emphasize writing in second grade.  It's also another chance to learn a little bit about them.  Several have told me that they want to be a teacher just like me, which is sweet.  Several have also shown me that they didn't follow directions with how to organize their paper, so that's been very helpful too.

I don't take a grade on the assignment, so that puts students at ease.  I do however, read each one and take notes about student strengths and weaknesses.  I record these notes in a Google doc so I can quickly access it from any school computer.  While it's more work to type the data in twice, it also means I don't have to lug around a huge stack of papers around to all my meetings.

After I make my way through this stack:



(I'm about half done)

I'll seal them in envelopes.  We took a "brain break" and decorated envelopes.  



(It was nice to give them a chance to be creative and exercise the right hemisphere of their brains.  I also know I have a very artistic and creative class, so they loved this opportunity.  Plus it was only 10 minutes, so it can't really be viewed as "wasted learning time".)

I then take the envelopes:



And  hide them until May.  A majority of my students forget about them, so it's a fun surprise at the end of the year.


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