Look What I Can Do!

I had an adorable Year 1 class today in which we made the curly beard Santas from Tuesday's post. They too loved it but what I really wanted to share today was our writing lesson.

I found this idea from a book I got cheap at Whitcoulls and bought thinking that it had some great adaptable ideas for the junior primary school and I finally got to use one of these activities today.

Now I know it says for the kindergarten classroom but I believe with a little tweaking these ideas are perfect for the junior primary classroom.

We did the exercise titled 'Look What I Can Do'. I shared a story about how proud I was when I finally learned how to tie my shoelaces and then asked children to think about what they are proud of achieving. I asked them to think about things that they couldn't do when they started school that they can do now. The class did a Think-Pair-Share about what kinds of things they were proud of and then we each shared an idea and wrote it on the whiteboard.  As this was a junior class we did a shared writing example about learning to tell the time, which went something like:

I am proud of learning how to tell time because I can read the clock by myself.

Children then went away to write their own achievement that they were proud of and why and drew  a picture of them doing that thing. The children were proud of all sorts of things from tying their shoelaces to swinging on the monkey bars to being able to count in 2s and they were really chuffed to be able to share their achievements and take pride in them too!