Daily News

Our district adopted a new handwriting book this year, and (happy dance) we received a consumable for every kiddo!  I was really excited to no longer make copies of handwriting pages, and I would be able to keep all their work in one place! They worked really hard on their handwriting, and we finished their books before we left for Christmas break.

Now that we are finished with the book, we are moving on to Daily News! Daily News is a time when kids share ONE thing from their weekend, day, evening, etc. I copy down what they tell on the Daily News board so the whole class can see. I love Daily News because it is a great way for kids to share that one thing they have been DYING to tell me all day! I also get to know a lot about my kiddos and their interests. It allows me to have conversations about sentence structure, punctuation, capitalization, nouns, verbs...anything! Many times I purposefully make a mistake while I'm writing down what they told me so it can be corrected. Since we worked on cursive writing during the fall, Daily News is written entirely in cursive this semester so they can practice their skills. Once the board is filled up and our discussion is over, the kids copy Daily News in their notebooks so I can get a handwriting grade:)

Here is a picture of Daily News in my classroom. I know the name makes it seem like we do this everyday, but I usually only have time for it about 2 or 3 times a week. Sorry it looks a little messy, but I had to blotch out kids' names!

I'm lucky enough to have a lined dry erase board that I just attach to the top of my regular board. I've also done Daily News on chart paper, and it works really well (and you get to keep a record of all the Daily News throughout the year).