We've taken a detour...

You know when you go on a road trip and you see a billboard that advertises fresh pecans from Georgia at really cheap prices and you love pecan pie, so you get off the highway because the place looks really close by and then you soon discover you've just added three extra hours to an already really long drive to Florida because it wasn't really that close to the highway after all?  

Ya. We're not talking about that kind of detour here.  

Today we're talking about what good teachers do. Good teachers know that sometimes the best plans come at 5:00 in the morning while you're waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. 

So with that in mind, we're  taking a bit of a detour in our writing about Dave (see post from yesterday).  I'm sick of winter and I got the impression on Monday that my students were too.  Since we're moving toward creative writing in our writer's workshop, I thought to myself, "What would happen if we wrote a thank-you card to winter and then wished it on its way?"  How much fun would it be to say thanks to winter for some great memories, but find a polite and friendly way to say: you must go now?  

So that's what we started today! The boys and girls are working on letter writing, using brackets to provide extra information, along with adding humor to their writing buy telling a season to ease on down the road, so to speak.  

I can't wait to have my students share these cards with one another. Judging by their enthusiastic pencils this afternoon, I think they're going to be great!  

Have a look at my sample pictured below, along with my super non-pinterest-worthy instructions in red marker:  write two things you liked about this winter and one "off you go now" sentence, also be sure to use lots of brackets to 'whisper' extra information to your reader.