Tag Archives: pictures

This One’s Just For Fun

I take a lot of pictures.  Most of them are related to what we’re learning, but sometimes there just for fun.  Cute pictures that make us happy or of silly stuff that 2nd graders do.  This is one of those “just for fun” posts. 🙂  And yes, I asked them if I could take these pictures and post them here.  Some of them even asked me to! LOL

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This was actually the photo that inspired this post.  How could you NOT put a picture of twin Darth Vaders on your blog? 🙂

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I tweeted this picture when it happened (yes, with permission!), but didn’t post it here.  As we were making muffins for our 100th Day celebration, I LOL’d when Tyrin brought up a connection to a favorite Fig Pudding character.  He said, “We better be careful or Josh will steal all of our butter and eat it!” LOVE IT!

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This one was posted before when I told the story about our door decoration, but I had to post it again because it just shows how silly some Rm. 202 friends can be, especially when you put another 2nd grader behind the camera! Great job, again, Baron!  You were an excellent photographer!

 Ok, so these are my own kiddos, not my students, but they definitely fit in the category of silly, right?  This is what happens when we’re waiting for daddy and the camera comes out. 🙂

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What’s more fun than taking a picture in a police car?  We went to a pancake fundraiser for the KPD and some nice officers let us take a peek (and a pic!).  Riley got to turn on the lights and siren, too!  WOHOO!

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I think I posted this one before, too, but it just made me laugh at how Jacob is tying himself in a knot to show me his fortune!

Ok, just two more.  Gotta love a squeeze from your teammate, and this picture is just to remember the times when super great kids come up and say “Can I take your picture and print it so I can write about you in my Writer’s Notebook?”  I’d say there’s no greater honor. 🙂

What would you put in a post that was called Just for Fun??  Leave us a comment and tell us about something fun you’ve done lately!  We’d love to read your comments. 🙂

Fiction Frenzy!

We have been busy over the last week collecting new ideas in our notebooks as we start a fiction writing unit.  As with every unit I teach, there are specific strategies that I teach about how to collect for that genre; the idea is that these can then be used over and over again once you know how they work.

Together throughout the week we read several books together, then looked at an idea we could pull out of that book to use in our writing.  First we read The Wreck of the Zephyr by Chris Van Allsburg and talked about how to meld real and imaginary events into the same story.  Then we read Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street by Roni Schotter, and talked about how to collect “interesting people” to use as characters.  We also tried a strategy that Eva, the girl in the story, uses when she asks “What if?” and then twists the story in an interesting way.  On Thursday we read Moira’s Birthday by Robert Munsch, and brainstormed “messy situations” that we could use in our stories to add interest, conflict and fun.  Lastly, we tried something that I knew my writers had probably never done, and that I knew they’d love.  And they did.  🙂

Let me tell you about it.

The big idea was that kiddos were given pictures from which to get inspiration for a story.  The strategy was a lot like something we did at the beginning when we first started our Writer’s Notebooks.  The first time around, though, the pictures were from magazines, and this time they were from my iPhoto albums.  Yep,  pictures of my kiddos–I knew my school kiddos would be excited about this one and give it their all.  They really love anything related to my family, which I love, too.

We rotated pictures around the room, two at a time, and kids brainstormed ideas for stories that they could write.  Each time they got a new picture, they could then start a new idea, or add on to the one they were already writing.  Here are the pictures we used for inspiration:

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The activity was really fun, and I am pretty sure that many of these ideas will become the seeds they’ll choose to publish.  Be sure also see the posts about it on our blogs.  Maybe you could even try it yourself.  What stories would you come up with from these pictures? Comment and tell us about it!  We’d love to use your stories as inspiration, too! 🙂