Wonderful Writing

My VERY talkative auditory learners/kindergartners 

are doing well in writers' workshop.

This surprises me, given the amount of concentration and stamina that's needed to accomplish the work of writing.  

Our solution to the jabbering?.... a miniature blinking lantern!

  When the red light is flashing, the children know to be silencio!    
(Walmart--less than $5)
  The last 'button push' produces the red light.
The 'first push' flashes a series of white lights, 
which we use as the signal to whisper.  
The assistant's job includes regulating the light during table work.

During a guided drawing lesson, we learned to create a pirate.
A dad had dressed as a pirate the day before and treated us to ice cream sundaes!  He brought the loot in a "treasure box, which could only be opened after deciphering the pattern on the lid.
We used the drawing instructions in I Can Draw People.

This is from a mini-lesson on making text-to-text connections.
(Not a writers' workshop moment, but a favorite from the week!)
My class loves  Fletcher And The Falling Leaves;
we have read the book, heard the CD,
and watched the animated Scholastic version!
Most of my students made the connection to 
Leaf Trouble by the end of page three.
Don't you just want to do a happy dance when it works?!

These are writing samples from a write-the-room activity.
The student on the left is beginning to use more lower-case letters in his translations from eye-to-hand.  The student on the right is working on letter placement.  At this point in the year, I don't expect anyone to hit the mark with these kinds of lines; our curriculum worksheets, however, contain much smaller lines.  I like to build an "I can do it!" attitude by providing different types of writing paper.  I use paper with word boxes, single lines, etc.  Mrs. Wills has many samples of appropriate writing paper.  The paper shown above is from
Homeschoolcreations.com.