I have loved the idea of Chalk-A-Bration as soon as I read about the idea on Betsy's blog, TEACHING YOUNG WRITERS. for months and was determined to make time for it each month. This Friday was the perfect day to begin. My third graders had been in class for 8 days and we had already started our Friday morning tradition of POETRY FRIDAY! I figured Chalk-A-Bration would be a natural extension.
It was perfect for so many reasons!
-Chalk-A-Bration was a great way to begin connecting online with my class this year. They could see immediately that we were part of something beyond the classroom walls.
-I showed them Betsy's blog and shared her idea of Chalk-A-Bration. I talked about how much I loved the idea--so much that I wanted to try it. That we get ideas and build on ideas by learning from and with others.
-They realized that others would see their work and that chalking on the playground would be a fun way to surprise others with fun words and illustrations.
-They LOVED the word Chalk-A-Bration and it served as a great word study discussion for the day.
-It was 15 minutes of joyful literacy!
Kids had great ideas for chalking.
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It was perfect for so many reasons!
-Chalk-A-Bration was a great way to begin connecting online with my class this year. They could see immediately that we were part of something beyond the classroom walls.
-I showed them Betsy's blog and shared her idea of Chalk-A-Bration. I talked about how much I loved the idea--so much that I wanted to try it. That we get ideas and build on ideas by learning from and with others.
-They realized that others would see their work and that chalking on the playground would be a fun way to surprise others with fun words and illustrations.
-They LOVED the word Chalk-A-Bration and it served as a great word study discussion for the day.
-It was 15 minutes of joyful literacy!
Kids had great ideas for chalking.
Many kids had fun chalking bright, happy pictures!
Others decided to use a favorite line we read in our readaloud this week. "Make Like a Sponge!" was a funny line used in The Trouble With Chickens when the chickens were annoyed that J.J. Tully would not go out in the rain.
Others chose favorite lines from poems they enjoyed during our Poetry Friday! reading. This one --"My backpack weighs a thousand pounds." (Prelutsky)
Inspirational phrases were also popular!
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And we had to share our love of books and reading!
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We loved our first Chalk-A-Bration and can't wait until next month!
This post is so exciting. Your enthusiasm for Chalk-A-Bration, dissecting the word and all the different ways in which you chalked make me smile. I loved it from top to bottom. Thank you so much for joining and being official CHALKERS! Hope to see you next month.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Betsy! Love the idea --thanks for sharing it with the world:-)
DeleteI thought this was an April-August tradition. So glad to see that Betsy plans to continue it, especially since Linda has shown me that we can chalk on the i-Pads. I love the bright happy pictures that your students drew - especially the "I love reading" with the student shadows at the bottom and the shining sun for the end of the post!
ReplyDeleteChalking on the iPad. I missed that--how does it work???
DeleteI wish I could have shared Betsy's blog with my kids. Our network blocks blogs...except Kidblogs! I think next month I will post our chalkabration on our kidblogs site. Then we can share with other classes too. Are you doing a kidblog site?
ReplyDeleteWe are doing kidblogs but they'll only be internal to us. We'll have a classroom blog as part of our weebly site that will be public. I just did this myself and figured I'd use it to show my kids an example of a blog post about school before they start their own blogs this month.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE this so much! You are obviously an amazing teacher, Mary Lee! = )
ReplyDelete