Making it Easier

It's been difficult for students to remember what they have learned after a whole month. Initially I had thought about having them write one journal entry on Friday afternoon highlighting their weekly learning. Instead, I decided to keep a daily large chart of what we have learned all day long. Currently, we have an end of day discussion and I write down their thoughts. After the holidays, they will take turns writing the daily learning. I think this will help them when they are choosing their idea for writing. They are already surprised at how much they really do learn each day! It's amazing when we make something visible!

Back at it...

So today was a good day. Last week "something" was added to the servers and the computers all worked at once today! The kids did great despite the lack of practice I would have liked them to have experienced by now. They were able to log on, open my template, save it to their name, and then type their October learning! It was exciting to watch. This week, we discussed our learning for the month, just like we did last time. They turned and talked and told their peer what they were thinking about writing. One change was they wrote their plan on a sticky note before we went to lab and took it with them.
I have discovered waiting a whole month is way too long for them (and me) to remember everything we have learned. So, next month, we are going to write weekly learnings in their writer's notebooks so they can have several entries to choose from. I think that might work out better. We'll see!
Two students wrote so much, they weren't able to finish. They were excited to learn they could do it in the classroom tomorrow during writing workshop. They said, "On the computers?" When I said, "Of course," they were quite excited!