My VERY 1st Throwback Thursday

I decided to join The First Grade Parade for a Throwback Thursday.  I promised to blog more this summer, so here goes.

Click {here} to visit the linky party.

I have decided to share one of my most popular posts (and a favorite activity of mine).  It is about Parent Writing Journals.  I love having my students write in parent journals.  They write in them on Friday, take them home for the weekend and the parents write something back to the student.  We share them on Monday mornings.  I learn a lot about my students when they share their parent journals.  It is one of my favorite activities of our week.

Here is the original post:

Well, I have survived my first week of school.  It was only 4 days but, that is long enough for my little kinders.  I love my class.  They are doing a wonderful job of learning all of the rules and  procedures.  Most of them are catching on very quickly.  We are going to have a great year!

My school is focusing on teaching writing this year.  I know that when my students have a reason to write they are more likely to want to write.  So after much careful thought and a little luck while looking for a file on one of my jump drives, I found an idea I had used several years ago.  I had my students write in Parent Journals.  A Parent Journal is a spiral notebook where the students write (or draw) a note to their parents/grandparents/their family.  Then whoever the note was written to writes a note back to the student and returns the Parent Journal the next day. I had my students write in the journal on Friday and take it home.  Hopefully, each of my students brings the journal back on Monday.  The the students can share their journals and responses with each other.

Here is a link to the note I attached to the front of the spiral notebooks.  It is in Word, so that you can change it to suit your needs.  

Parent Journal Letter

Thank you so much for stopping by to visit.