Have a wonderful holiday

Division 7 had a nice wind-up to 2011 on Friday, with a whole holiday-themed day, including a really heartwarming movie called Snow Men, a Christmas story and some Christmas-themed dialogue story writing, some Christmas Mad Libs and Clock-o-rama, the game show where students have to tell time in a timely manner!

I got a few pictures of the students reading their collaborated short stories aloud.

Thanks for the gifts and cards, and for all the support you've given your child and us so far this year, and I wish you a wonderful holiday break and a happy new year!

Starbucks field trip

Thank-you so much, Division 7 families, for your generosity! Our Secret Santa swap donations had the manager of Starbucks fighting back tears today. I know the Caring Place will be grateful for all the wonderful items we brought in.

Thanks also to the parents who were able to come on our field trip.

Parents and guardians, you would have been proud at how appropriately the students behaved while at Starbucks.

Here are a couple of pics I grabbed en route. I meant to take more, sorry!

Thursday and Friday this week

Hi Parents/Guardians,

Just a note to remind everyone that this Thursday is our Secret Santa Charity Gift Swap. Please make sure your wrapped charity item is addressed to the student your child drew by Thursday morning.

We will be leaving the school after our gift exchange, which should be at about 9 am, and I'm hoping to be back at the school by 11 am. We'll see how fast the children walk, though, and how much time we spend sipping hot chocolate at Starbucks. Please remember to send a toonie to school with your child that day so he/she can order a bevvie of choice (steamed milk, cocoa, etc.)

Friday will be our class party. The students wanted to watch a festive film, so that will be our afternoon, and you may send a non-sharing snack (a small bag of popcorn, pretzels, chips, etc.) for your child for this time. This will be one time when a non-water beverage is also acceptable during class time, which I will provide (punch).

Email me (Nancy_Rupert@sd42.ca) if you have questions or concerns.

Nancy

Drumroll... We're done!

Dear Parents/Guardians of Nanowrimo authors,

After a month of slogging and sweating and creating and correcting, it is time to WIN.

In Computers tomorrow, students will be asked to verify their word count for their novels by cutting and pasting the text into the Nanowrimo Word Count Validator.

See here for more information: http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/node/1091548

Once the word count has been verified, your author will be proclaimed a winner of the challenge, and will be eligible for the prize!

Your involvement is necessary for the prize, however. Please see this for more details:

http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/node/1075382

and

http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/node/619879

The students have worked hard. We will be Youblishing the stories, too, but I want to give them a little time off of the stories before making final revisions/editing. I think they'll be in a better space to edit once they've had a short break from the stories.

Nancy

Home stretch!

Nanowrimo was not assigned for homework, although some students chose to continue working on their novel at home. However, we are now in the final week of writing. To be on track for completion on time, your writer should be at 75%.

So, the homework this week is going to be for everyone to be at 90% by the end of the week, and 100% by next Wednesday (November 30).

Remember, the writing itself takes place on Google Docs, but the nanowrimo site needs to be updated after writing is done. Students were given my email address in case of technology issues (such as password issues, etc.)

Thanks for continuing to support your budding novelist!

Check in on your budding novelist!

I am so impressed; Division 7 was floundering a bit this week when it came to our Nanowrimo goals. On Wednesday we were 14% of the way to completion with about a third of the month gone by. By Thursday we were at 18%, but many ambitious writers had increased their personal goals, finding that the Young Writers Program guidelines were too conservative for their abilities! Way to reach for the stars, Div. 7 writers!!

However, today I am thrilled to see that our class is at 42%, which is where we should be! Yay!!

Please ask your budding novelist to show you his or her story (on Google Docs). At this point we have learned about the structure of a story, good beginnings, and we've talked about character, so hopefully you see some of those lessons reflected in the writing. Next week we will talk about setting and good endings.

Also, remind your writer to make sure he or she has updated the YWP Nanowrimo site with the latest word count!

http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/

Blog survey

Please take a minute and give me some feedback on how you're finding the use of both this blog for giving parents information and the kidblog for writing homework.

I appreciate any input you can give me!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHBvY21RbzlNRFNxTFBzenlzVkV3TXc6MQ

You will have to cut and paste this--I am not sure why, but when I hyperlink it, I get an error message when trying to access the page. My apologies!