Come with me, and you'll be, in a world of pure imagination.

This past week our summer school class investigated mythical creatures and fairy tale characters. During our summer school sessions, I teach a single subject class. The students rotate from class to class--giving them a wide variety of opportunities to be taught by a variety of teachers.

This summer I am teaching writing and literacy.

This week we  read Where the Wild Things Are. I love this book so much. Maurice Sendak gives great detail to the characters he creates and the language of this story is absolutely beautiful.

After reading this story to my class, we decided to use our own imaginations to create our own 'wild things'. Students used markers and oil pastels to create their wild thing pictures. Some students had a hard time filling in small details with the oil pastels, so I gave them the choice to use colored pencils for the very fine detail. We discussed the attributes and personalities of our wild things.

Next, we cut out our wild things and set about making the background designs. Students drew their background with marker first, and then filled in the empty space with watercolors.

We glued our wild things onto the background and then I glued the background designs onto a larger sheet of white butcher paper. Now there was a frame around their work.

Students learned that a frame is designed to increase the aesthetic value of paintings. We created a frame from scrap tissue paper (used earlier in the year for an Eric Carle author study) and scrap wrapping paper.

They turned out to be so beautiful.

Because the summer school classes are small, it's easy to meet in small writing conferences with the students. When writing about our wild things I worked with a wide variety of writing capabilities. Some students participated in 'side by side' writing with me. Some needed some help to stretch the words they wanted to write. Some students were able to write about their work completely independently.

Before we began our writing sessions, we had a whole class brainstorming session where the students were introduced to the following organizational web:

This helped us get our brain juices flowing. Many times very young children will experience frustration with writing because they attempt to 'outwrite' their own capabilities. Having a teacher there to help them compose their writing in to manageable sentences can help students avoid frustrating moments.

While I was meeting with students in one on one writing conferences, the rest of the children were given the option to play with other centres that were set out, or participate in structured mini lessons with a TA.

At the end of the week we had a special dress up day! Students were allowed to come to school dressed as a fairy tale character or mythical creature. I allowed the students an opportunity throughout the week to make their own fairy tale costumes. I showed them how to make fairy wings and crowns! We also made magical wands to bring to our "Knights of the Long Table Lunch."

One of my students was very keen to make shields. He brought in his own shield from home and wrote instructions for the rest of the class on how to make a shield. He drew pictures of 'step one, step two, and step three'. Everybody was very excited to make their own shields!

Here is one of the students with her own special unicorn shield!

Our school often uses Summer School to attract new clientele. When it comes to understanding and working in a private school setting, I always try to keep the customer in mind. Privatized schooling is ultimately (not matter how much you hate to admit it) a service industry. This is why I often insist upon sending home student work with an explanation of the processes we go through--even during summer school. It doesn't take much time to write up a quick note briefing parents on the activities you focused on--and parents are often so appreciative of the fact that you take the time to do this.

Here is the sample of my write up for the week!

All in all it was a great week for creativity and imagination!

Until next time,

Sam