826michigan

In the fall, our first field trip was to 826michigan.  It’s one of my favorite places to take kids because it gets them excited about writing.  The staff and volunteers are AMAZING and I love how creative my kids are when we’re there…and it carries over to when they come back to school.  It’s fantastic.  A few weeks ago, Catherine from 826 asked if my class would be interested in choosing a piece of writing for their upcoming 10^th Anniversary book.  I was honored to be asked, and we had a great time selecting the writing that we want in the book.  We spent time writing a rubric that would guide us through the process and it was clear they have learned a lot about rubrics and what’s important writing.  We read the three pieces together as a whole group, and then in three different groups the following day.  In their groups, they read the stories again (we rotated so they would be reading one story at a time) and then rated each story with 1-3 stars.  They also wrote a sentence or two about what they liked about the story.  After everyone had a turn with each story, we gathered as a whole group again and talked about the stories and what we liked about them.  The story that had the highest number of stars is called Momzilla.  J