Star Writers and a Sneak Peek of 13 Days of Christmas

For morning work in my kinder class we write in our journals.  My students don't all get to the classroom at the same time.  It depends on on how they get to school and there can be a difference of up to about 10 minutes from the first and the last kid that show up.  So I lay the journals out every morning and once they have unpacked they can get to work.

I trained them the first month of school so they know what I expect.  Basically the students write their first and last name, the short date and then draw a picture and write a sentence about what they drew.  Now we also do writer's workshop at a later time in the day, but these monthly journals are great for many reasons: 1 - Practice writing their name (which is one of our standards) 2 - They get to write about whatever they want! So all those things that the kids come in wanting to share about random things that happened at home - they can write about it. 3 - It really let's me work with them on their level of skill.  Some kids were working on compete sentences while others were labeling their picture or just writing a letter or two for their picture. 4 - Handwriting - They can always use extra help with that.  The list can go on and on. 

We've been doing journals for a couple months now and now it's time to REALLY work on those sentences.  So I have introduced my "Star Writers."

This past week we have been working on leaving spaces consistently between our words.  So we had our week of training where I would remind them as they were unpacking to space things out.  If they left spaces between their words then they would receive a blue star on that journal page. 

Here are a few samples of their writings:

Here are the little cards that I have on the tables are reminders. The stars are from the dollar store. 

This next week I am introducing the gold star which is for using word wall words correctly in their sentences.

Drum Roll Please.........

Get ready for the 12 13 Days of Christmas Giveaway brought to you by.....13 Amazing Bloggers!

So here's how this is going to work...

Everyday a new blogger is going to post a blog about their giveaway AND a FREEBIE just for you!

They are going to answer 12 questions about their holiday favorites - feel free to ask your own questions in the comments.

They will also give you directions on how to enter their own giveaway!

But that's not all...on day 14 there will be an opportunity to win ALL the previous prizes in one big giveaway! How exciting!!!

ALL WINNERS will be announced on day 15!

Get excited cause this is going to be one great giveaway frenzy!

The fun starts tomorrow - Monday December 9th over at Simply Kinder!!! :)

Christina Mauro