Student Compliment Notes

I ask a student to go into another K class and help that teacher with something.  The other teacher also sends a student into my class to help me with something. During this time (which we do the first 15 minutes of class), we (the class) writes a Compliment Note together.

I use my doc camera to display the writing page. The students raise their hands and give a compliment (says something nice) about that person. The class is asked to help me spell words by using our word wall. If the sight word is not up there, then I direct them in how to spell something out. They tell me what they think and I write it.

Example:   sweet was originally spelled s-w-e-t; However, after teaching them the long /e/ and the /ee/, my students now spell s-w-e-e-t without any help from me.

Example: I allowed my students to spell cute like:  c-o-o-t because we had learned of the /oo/ sounds. After writing it so often, I have showed them the proper way and added it to our word wall. This way they could start spelling it correctly using the word wall!

My students have caught on to the fact that leaving the room means they get written about, so I hold the letters till Friday and by that time they had forgotten about their letter. When it is time to do our shared reading, I ask the student the letter is about to stand up and we (as a class) read the letter to that student. They get to take the letter home and read it all by themselves.

Friday is a great time to point out the punctuation, capitals, and spaces between words. I have really grown to love this activity. I will be starting this WAY earlier next year. I won't do this every day, but 2-3 times a week.

 Our 2nd letter will be even more detailed!  I will ask student writers to write the sentences and do their best spelling (asking the class for help when they want).  I think this will be FANTASTIC practice.