Our Writing Checklist

Imagine this: you are on an airplane, ready to fly to a tropical island for a vacation. You have been planning this trip for months, your bags are packed, and as you buckle your seatbelt you imagine warm beaches and clear, blue water. Your pilot comes on over the intercom. "Please make sure your belt is buckled, your tray table is locked, and your seat is in the upright position. We are cleared for takeoff!" You hear the engines get louder, and the plane starts to roll down the runway. Suddenly, the engines go quiet and your plane slowly comes to a stop. You never left the ground. A crackily - and sheepish - voice comes on through the speakers: "Um, sorry about that, folks. We seem to have forgotten to get gas..."

People in many different jobs use checklists. For pilots who fly airplanes, checklists are crucially important. Before any flight, a pilot uses a checklist to make sure all of the parts of the airplane are working normally and there are no problems with the plane. Your plane would never run out of gas on your way to a tropical island, because every pilot checks the gas before going anywhere.

People in other jobs use checklists, too. Nurses and doctors use checklists to make sure their patients stay safe and get better. Mechanics who fix cars follow checklists to make sure they put your engine back together the right way. Bakers follow checklists to make sure they add enough yeast to their bread.

Checklists are a great tool. They can help you plan your day, help you get everything you need for a recipe at the grocery store, and help you know which Horrible Harry books you haven't checked out of the library yet.

We used a checklist in our writing workshop today. This simple checklist helps us go through writing that we have finished to make sure it is the best it can be. So far, we are looking for basic things: conventions, a title, star words, and feeling words. As the year goes on, the checklists will change, too. Students find checklists a helpful way to make sure you have done everything you need to do. And they help you get to your vacation on time, too.

Writing Like Kevin Henkes

Kevin Henkes is an amazing author, one of my favorites. Any time you want to learn about writing a narrative - a story - you can read one of his books and try something that he does. We have worked on three of his strategies.

Kevin Henkes Strategy 1: Star Words

Kevin Henkes uses words that are intriguing, specific, fun, and unique. When he writes his books, he clearly spends a lot of time choosing these interesting words so that the book is more interesting to read. Good authors choose interesting words. We chose interesting words, too! We call these words star words.

Kevin Henkes Strategy 2: The Rule of Threes

Have you ever noticed that many authors from all around the world use groups of threes in their writing? It is incredibly common, and once you start looking for it, it is a strategy you will see everywhere. Kevin Henkes uses groups of three, too.

Kevin Henkes Strategy 3: Showing How a Character Feels

In Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, Kevin Henkes doesn't just tell you how Lilly feels, he shows you. As a reader, you can figure out from his description exactly what feeling she has.

Books We've Read Recently

Here are some of the books our class has read recently. Ask us about them!

More math games to play!

Have you been playing Sushi Monster for a while and you need a new challenge? Try these games out! Some of them are decidedly difficult, especially at the harder levels. That's ok, because the students in room 204 know that having to struggle makes your brain grow more connections!

Ten Frame Math -
Ten frames are a great way to visualize numbers, especially if you are working on your tens facts. Play around with the levels here.
http://illuminations.nctm.org/Activity.aspx?id=3565

Gate -
In this game, you use place value to defeat the shadows, hopefully unlocking the mystery of the gate. At first, you will probably just add ones, tens, and hundreds to make the numbers, but as you get better and the game gets harder, you will build bigger numbers and subtract, too. At the higher levels, you have to use decimals, too, which we don't talk about in second grade, but you can probably figure out how they work as you play the game. Good luck, this is a hard one!
http://www.brainpop.com/games/gate/

Battleship Numberline -
Enemy ships are located somewhere on the number line. As you play this game, you will work on locating whole numbers (and fractions at the harder levels) on a number line.
http://www.brainpop.com/games/battleshipnumberline/

Lure of the Labrynth -
What on earth is going on in these three games? You are given very little information about how to play or how to solve this enormously challenging math puzzles, but keep trying things out and you'll pick them up on the tenth or eleventh try. These were designed for middle schoolers, so don't be discouraged if you have no idea what is going on at first.
http://www.brainpop.com/games/lureofthelabyrinthemployeecafeteria/
http://www.brainpop.com/games/lureofthelabyrinthmineshaft/
http://www.brainpop.com/games/lureofthelabyrinthemployeelounge/