Today, all of the first graders gathered together to celebrate having published our first piece of writing in first grade. The cafeteria was decorated with photographs of student writers, red and white balloons, the letters "Congratulations Writers" and a slideshow was playing showing first grade writers at work.
Ms. Carr spoke to us about what we learned during the Launching unit. Children shared many of the ideas and habits that we have practiced:
- Writing about our lives
- Using spacing
- Making sure that we (and others) can read our own work
- Tapping out words to write down all of the sounds that we hear
- Using punctuation and capitalization
- Paper choice
- Having words and pictures that match
- Adding on ("When you're done, you've just begun!")
We headed off to different first grade classes to be with the children from kindergarten. Ms. Stern had the kids from Mrs. Hoffer's class, plus the children that were new to the school. In the first grade classes, we had a chance to read our stories to our friends from last year. Our kindergarten teachers even came! We were surprised and very happy to see them. Everyone took turns reading their published pieces. Then we went back to our regular classrooms.