Santa Fail.

What a busy few weeks it has been! My kids have been working very hard on improving their behavior and making good choices. I tell ya, that Class Dojo website is the best thing to happen to my classroom! I don't think I would have made it through the last few weeks without it.

We worked extremely hard on learning about settings and characters during Writers Workshop. I had them draw settings with lots of details and add characters in later. Then they used a setting lead to start off their story. After that I had them use the frame of "somebody...wanted..but..so" to introduce a conflict in the story. They ended up writing some pretty well rounded stories that included the basic parts! I was very proud of the work they did. I did it all on a whim too - I do not come up with lesson plans very well when I think about them - ideas just come to me sometimes!

Next week I am going to start a reindeer unit and use all of the awesome products I have found on TpT to help! Deanna Jump (of course) has a really nice unit on the topic of reindeer. We have to start talking about arctic animals soon - I love our penguin unit. I will start that after break though, everyone is in the Christmas spirit at school so penguins will have to wait.

Off to do some planning while my daughter naps - it will be Christmas tree time when she wakes up! And I leave you with the reason for the title of this post:

We tried.