Birthdays
When one of my students has a birthday I give them a cute birthday hat to wear. The class sings an adorable Happy Birthday song. It even includes singing Happy Birthday like a cat! Meow, meow, meow... I ask the student to share his/her plans for his/her special day and then the class takes turns asking questions and giving the birthday kid compliments. Having the children ask questions is harder than in sounds. Most of the kids want to share about their own birthday. There are a multitude of teachable moments on birthday share days! Last year I had my student of the week bring in show and tell and we write letters to him/her and staple them in a book. I usually took a grade on this activity since it was purposeful and I could grade different elements of writing: spacing, spelling, capitalization, format, originality/creativity, etc. Since our district will be implementing Lucy Calkins, I would like to only d...