Wow!

We had a fun day at school today!

 

 

We do these types of days three times a year.  We get the kiddos excited about writing and also provide them with experiences to write about!  (Two birds with one stone, so to speak.)

Every year, schools in our feeder pattern are asked to exchange stories students have written.  We're given a certain prompt, a certain window to do it in, etc.  We've never wanted to participate in this, because the timeline doesn't work well.  Also, it's asking us to grade someone else's class of papers.  And trusting someone else to grade ours?  No thank you.  This year, when our principal declined,  (We can do that due to our exemplary status.) she was asked to give a snippet of our writing curriculum.  This was in early November.  She responded with information about one of our big writing days.  We had just had our first one at the end of October.  She ended up presenting the info at a principals' meeting...and then was inundated with people wanting to observe our next presentation.

Voila, we had 50 visitors today!  We didn't change any part of our presentation.  They're welcome to come, but we do this for the kids.  While the students were icing their cupcakes and writing down their brainstorming ideas in their journal, Mary and I fielded a bunch of questions while also helping children.

Then our wonderful team took the students outside for a track break and Mary and I gave a 25 minute overview to all the visitors and had a mini Q & A session.  It was fun because I love teaching teachers, but it was EXHAUSTING too...like 'first day of school' kind of exhausting.

Whew!