It certainly has been a while since I have had the opportunity to blog about my second grade experience. The past three weeks I have been taking over full-time in the second grade classroom. Luckily, my mentor teacher set this experience up in such a way that I was completely ready to take over the classroom when it was my turn to do so! During my third takeover week, I had the opportunity to conduct a small, yet "fun" writing piece with my students. I decided to create a prompt that had to do with the huge snowstorm Buffalo, New York experienced during the middle of November. I showed a small news clip that demonstrated how high "8 feet of snow" would look like in the classroom. The students were amazed at the fact that 8 feet of snow would be almost as tall as the ceiling in our classroom! From this news clip, I showed a few pictures that my grandparents had taken of their house during the snow storm. Afterwards, I gave them a writing prompt. They were to pretend that they had woken up one morning to 8 feet of snow! Their task was to create a realistic fiction story around this prompt! Together, we sat together on the carpet and discussed what a realistic problem may look like. The following list was created: roof collapses, flooding, snow falls in the house, dog becomes lost in the snow, the door is frozen shut so no one can get inside, etc. 

      On the third day of writing and revising our stories, I made it "snow" in our second grade classroom. The night before, I had cut out 50 or 60 giant, white snowflakes to be placed on the floor and the desks of the classroom. The students were very excited! The last day was spent writing in the snow, with music in the background. This is just one of many writing prompts/stories I conducted during our Realistic Fiction writing unit. I have thoroughly enjoyed teaching writing to this second grade class. It is amazing how much more detail my second graders are adding to their writing from just the beginning of the year!