A Few Ideas from Summer School

I am having a great time in summer school for two reasons:  first, I get to work with one of my best teacher friends.  The two of us are co-teaching almost second graders.  It is really inspiring to work alongside someone that you admire and who can jump in and add to your ideas.  Second, these kids are seven and eight, which seems WAYYY older than my four and five year olds during the school year. Because of this, I am really enjoying doing some activities that I would never be able to do with my little ones.  Here is a little taste of what we have been up to.

 I got this idea from First Grader... At Last!  Whenever we come across a word that doesn't follow the "rules" of spelling, we throw it in jail.  The kids love hearing me pronounce words phonetically (for example "pee-oh-pull" for people)... they think that is just the most hilarious thing they have ever heard!

This is one of our prisoners, "Mr. Would."  Definitely not my best work, but it's not bad for something we threw together on the fly!  Summer school is definitely a lot more relaxed than regular school :o)

We also did a persuasive writing piece.  We used this fantastic book, Mr. Belinsky's Bagels, as a mentor text.  The book is about Mr. Belinsky.  He makes perfect, delicious bagels and nothing else.  Then, the fancy Bon Bon Bakery opened up across the street and stole most of Mr. Belinsky's customers.  Mr. Belinsky starts to make fancy pastries so that he can compete, and he becomes so busy that he stops making his famous bagels altogether.  Of course in the end, Mr. Belinsky goes back to making his bagels and wins his loyal customers back. 

For this writing activity, we decided to have the children write advertisements convincing customers to come back to Mr. Belinsky's bagel shop.  We talked about persuasive writing, and brainstormed a list of points they might want to use to convince customers to come to their shop.  We also showed them some print ads as examples.

 I love the way these came out!  The kids really enjoyed making their own advertisements.

 This one says "they have poppyseed, onion and more" and "even tough guys like it!"  Check out those muscles... So funny!

I love this one... "Come to Belinsky's bagels.  It's perfect!  It's out of this world!!!!  Come on, it's the bagels!!!"

I will definitely be doing this activity again next time I have "big kids."  They really connected to the topic and understood how to persuade their customers.  It also fit in perfectly with our Neighborhood theme.

PS.  I am still looking for people to write a post on my blog!  Click {HERE} for more!