Submitted By: milo1025@juno.com

Affiliate Group: Souhegan Valley NH, 2002/2003

School District: Wilton-Lyndeborough, NH

Grade Level: K-8 Language Arts/Math

Intended Audience: Teachers

Standards Addressed:
Language Arts and Math Standards for our District are addressed with this lesson for grades 2,3, and 4.

Curricular Connection:
Math and language arts

Schedule:
10 minutes at the end of each month.
Two 20-minute class periods for writing and about 20 minutes of computer time per student if you choose to type your class book.
It usually takes me about 15 minutes to collate and bind the book.

Background Information:
You may need to provide examples of previous work for each activity to encourage details in the student writing. Class discussion of each activity of the timeline will encourage longer stories.

Teaching Suggestions:
Introduction: On the first day of October, I ask the students to think about the class activities from the previous month of September. I encourage the students to think about what they have enjoyed in class and what they think I should teach again to next year's second graders. I explain that I need their opinion about what makes school fun but educational. We make a class list of all activities that are mentioned. I then have students write down their top five choices. I collect these papers and determine which activities will be posted in the classroom. I buy calendar cards at the local teaching supply store but you could make your own. I then tape these cards along the top of the bulletin or along a wall in the classroom. We continue to do this at the beginning of every month. Each month has five activities posted.

Class Writing Workshop: In May, we review each card and the students are asked to choose one activity to write about. We discuss each activity and reminisce about the details of that activity. Each activity has to be educational (no holiday parties, snow days). Field trips are acceptable to me. The students then write about that activity. I walk around providing support and encouraging the students to elaborate. The students use their desk dictionaries that they create throughout the year. I instruct the students to enter words into their dictionaries that I feel they may need later for these writings (names of materials, titles of games or books, vocabulary, etc.) The students include their own opinions and reasons for their own opinion. After completing the writing process, they pass the stories in for assessment. (I use these stories for language arts assessments and follow the usual writing agenda.)

Closure: When I return their stories the students are given time to type the story on the computer. After printing their story, the students illustrate and mount their work on construction paper. I then bind the papers to create a class book. I use a class picture for the cover and list each author and illustrator. I include a teacher page where I write a brief memory or compliment of each student in the class. The book is then read to this class and left in our library for the rest of the year. On step-up day, I read some of these stories to my next year's class so that they can get a feel for what next year will be like. I keep these books. I hand back the handwritten copies to each student. I also display these books during "Open House" for parents to enjoy.

Modifications: This activity can be modified for any students by having the student dictate a memory of an activity and provide the illustration.

Comments: I enjoy hearing what students find interesting in school and have been surprised by some of the activities that have made it into our timeline. The students enjoy looking back over the year and this activity brings nice closure and a keepsake of each school year. I also can use this activity as a reflection of my teaching. I learn new things about each activity and have been amazed at how the students will suggest improvements or recommend slight changes that make a nice difference for the next year.

Reinforcing Activities:
From time to time, I will discuss how our class timeline is growing and pose questions about how many months, or activities, the students have completed. You could also photocopy the monthly cards and encourage the students to put them in chronological order.

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