This happened today:

Besides being a really great example of interactive writing, there’s a great story behind WHAT we did and WHY we wrote this News Flash.  So keep reading. 🙂

The last two Fridays, we’ve ended up with many things to do and have deemed the day a “ketchup and mustard” day.  I have given them a big ‘ole list of things to do or finish, and they work through it at their pace, moving on when they need to–making sure they complete all the things on the list.  While they were working I have been pulling kiddos individually to do assessments and other things.  And you know what’s really cool?  These kiddos are already AMAZINGLY good at managing both their time and behavior to make these periods both engaging and productive.  I’ve had 5th grade classes that have had a hard time with that!

Just so you can appreciate it, here’s the list they were working from this morning.  The stars are MUST-DOs and the others are CAN-Dos for when they had time.  The boxes on the left are full of everyone’s initials; they marked the activity when they were finished and moved on to the next thing they had to do:

I was SO IMPRESSED when we sat down before lunch to debrief on how the morning had gone.  And apparently Nate was impressed, too, because he said, “Mrs. Bearden, I think after lunch we should write a news flash about this because of how great we did!”  I agree, buddy, I agree!  Well done, Rm. 202 kiddos! 🙂