How do you choose work for a Celebration Portfolio? - by the First Graders

Yesterday our first graders noticed how their writing has changed over the year.  They selected a range of their own work for Celebration Portfolios to show all their fantastic first grade writing.  Today students worked hard to explain why they chose each piece.  Below are some of their reflections on their writing.  Check out your students' Celebration Portfolio (coming home on the last day of school) for more fantastic ideas!

Examples of our best thinking:

All About Sapphires is a good example of my best thinking because sapphires are hard to describe.

How to writing is a good example of our best thinking because you have to think about what you know, and then think about the steps, and think about an introduction and conclusion.

Math journals are a good example of our best thinking because you have to think of a strategy to solve the problem, a strategy to check your problem, a number sentence, and a sentence explaining how you figured it out.

Examples of our most challenging work:

My most challenging work was when I had to think alot about my all about book because it took a long time to do it and I really needed to work hard.

My most challenging work was my how to because you have to have a lot of steps, introduction, conclusion, and materials.  You always need three facts and the facts have to be specific.

Examples of our best cooperation:

My example of cooperation is the persuasive letters because I got ideas from my friends.

The Chinese New Year voicethread is an example of my best cooperation because I had to work with a bunch of friends and they gave me ideas and those people I remember we worked well together.

The time when we made student learning teams was an example of my best cooperation because we had to choose learning teams that we would work well together and we would help each other.

First Grade Celebration Portfolios, by the first graders

  First graders are getting ready to become second graders.  They looked through their journals and writing pieces from the year to see how their writing has changed.  Then we worked as a class to figure out what we noticed, and how we could choose our best writing pieces.  All the questions, sentences, and ideas below are straight from the first graders!  Enjoy! -- Mrs. Jiang

What did first graders notice about their writing?

Did you ever wonder how the first graders writing has changed?  Well let's see!

• In the beginning of the year, we couldn't spell that good, but in the end of the year we know how to spell more words that we didn't know before.
• I noticed that the writing was growing.  At the first part of the year, we only wrote a little bit of writing, but as days passed, our writing got longer and longer, with more and more sentences.
• Our writing started out all sloppy and sometimes didn't make any sense.  Now its neat and not so sloppy and makes more sense.
• Our writing had more specific words and details at end of the year.
• At the beginning of the year we sometimes forgot more capital letters and periods.  Now we start fixing a few of those problems.
• At the beginning of the year I couldn't really read my writing because my b's were d's and stuff like that, but at the end of the year I could read it.
• At the beginning of the year, some of us forgot to add spaces between words, but now we all use spaces.
• At the beginning of the year, sometimes we forgot illustrations, or our illustrations didn't have color or details, but now we have more details in our illustrations.
• At the beginning of the year, we just drew pictures, and pictures are where there are only the things that you want to draw, like anything.  At the end of the year, we started doing illustrations, and illustrations are where you match the words with your drawing.

Now you that you know what we reviewed about our writing, you can review and compare your own writing.