SOLSC Day 16: Halfway Point

I have to say I am pretty proud of myself that I’ve actually made it to Day 16 of this challenge without missing a day. Half way through and I’m determined to keep it up for the rest of the month as well. It’s been a really positive, wonderful experience for me to both get my thoughts down and share them, but also to have the opportunity to get to know so many others out there from their own stories and posts. I am loving this experience very much and excited that I decided to be part of it.

While my students are not “officially” doing the SOL challenge, I did decide to do a daily writing challenge with my 5th graders for the month of March. I made it voluntary, but I was pleasantly surprised that most of my 19 students are going strong with it, and really enjoying it. I’m loving to see what they are coming up with in their writing notebooks. Some are using it like a journal and every daily entry talks about what happened that day or their feelings about something that day. Others are really changing it up, and every day is a bit different. They are creating lists about themselves, poems, and some are just writing about what comes into their heads. I am loving that they got so excited about this, and are actually continuing with it as well. At ethe end of the month, I am going to print off certificates for all the students that took part of the challenge and for those who completed all 31 days, I plan to put their names in a hat and pull one name randomly for a prize. The prize will be a $20 gift card to Barnes & Nobles! It’s been really cool to have about 15-20 minutes a day when the students are writing and so am I. I am really enjoying everything about this experience.