End of Year Writing Freebie

That's right!  The end is close enough that we can start prepping our kids for the big transition to first grade!  I am ready, are you?  (Well sort of ready!)

Recently we wrote stories about why we are ready for first grade.  Focused on what we know and of course how we are acting.  Here's the page we used for free:

This is what I got... funny what kids are proud of.  (I had a student say he learned how to stack blocks on his hand - which we did as a follow direction and team building activity!  Funny... but I told him to focus more on what we learned!)  

(He thought it was really cool that phone had no F in it... told me about it almost every day!)

I did these with little to no reminders. My kids are usually expected to write about 3/4 of a page for their writing but today I wanted them really to just be to the point and really narrow down something they were proud they did or learned!

We also did another writing assessment and this is more characteristic of what I would expect of my students for this point in the year.  

(Hahaha - had to share!  I think this little one is tired of doing artsy stuff while learning!)

(Can you read it?  I love it!)

Common Core of course samples a 4 sentence story - but remember I took over mid year and when they came in a good chunk of them could not even write one sentence.

So this activity served another purpose beyond the bulletin board.

I love making art with the black lines. I am sure it has some sort of technical name, but look at these great pictures the kids did!  They truly are amazing!

We also made a great class book that each student will get to take home.  The parents love these books for many reasons - a great keepsake, to see how their students compare with others, and to give their students something exciting to read that they made with their friends.

The way we do this is we all write our stories, then do the pictures only with black outlines.  I will run and copy it together into books for the kids and then we go back and color the original for a book for class.  Click the image below for your free class book!

Head on over to Simply Kinder to see how I created each student their very own book & grab the freebie!  

Click any image above or copy and paste this thread:   
http://www.simplykinder.com/2013/05/look-out-first-grade-here-we-come.html