We started our morning with an exciting game of two truths and a lie. They had so much fun sharing their own and then guessing what was true about their classmates.

After finishing our rough drafts yesterday, we spent today editing, revising, and polishing them up before our final drafts tomorrow. Students swapped stories with a partner and participated in a PQP- Praise, Question, Polish. Students read their classmates’ stories and then discussed something they did well in their writing, asked any questions that they had from the story, and offered advice on a piece of the story that they could make better. We talked about how to respectfully give constructive feedback and everyone did a great job of offering advice on their classmates’ writing. After hearing suggestions from their classmates, we learned about sensory details and how they can help make your writing more interesting. Sensory details include what you can see, hear, taste, smell, or touch around you. I challenged everyone to go back into their rough drafts and make changes based on their PQP suggestions and to add more sensory detail throughout the story.

After lunch, we spent some time practicing writing some more with the hamburger model. First, they were given a paragraph that had been jumbled up and they had to cut out the sentences and put them back in order. They also named which part of the hamburger model each sentence belonged in. Then, students were given 3 persuasive writing prompts to choose from and they had to write a paragraph defending their answer to the question. The questions were “Should celebrations of birthdays and holidays be permitted in school? Why or why not?”, “Should cell phones be allowed in school? Why or why not?”, and “Should MP3 players be allowed in school? Why or why not?”. After a quick discussion about what an MP3 player is, they got right to work! We had some time before ORA to allow students to share their paragraphs and there was a good mix of each question and whether they were for or against. I was surprised how many of them said phones should NOT be allowed!

To end our day, we practiced using some figurative language and played another game of four square Kahoot. It was so much fun and they got to learn more about the different types of figurative language!

Ask them tonight what hyperbole, alliteration, similes, or metaphors are! You can also discuss what they wrote about for their hamburger model and why they chose that one. I was surprised by how insightful some of their reasons were.

Tomorrow is our final day and the day of our big author circle! Students will be finishing their final drafts and then everyone will be reading their autobiographies aloud in front of the class. We talked about it today and will remind ourselves tomorrow what it means to be a respectful audience, but some students could definitely benefit from your encouragement! Speaking in front of groups can be scary but it is a very important skill for them to start developing!