I know this post is coming at the wrong time, but I have
been meaning to share what the second grade teachers had their students create
for Mother’s Day presents. The overall theme was that the teachers wanted the
present to be an audio recording of the students reading something they wrote
about their mother. However, each teacher had their students prepare different
pieces of writing for this purpose. Here are the various assignments that were
given:
Topic
1 – My favorite day I spent with my mother was when…or my favorite
memory was… This required the student to focus on one moment in time, provide
details, and sequence the events within the story. When done correctly, the
writings could be pretty lengthy.
Topic
2 – I would (hypothetically) celebrate Mother’s Day by… Students
described how they would do things such as surprising their mother with
breakfast in bed, going for a bike ride, watching movies, and/or making
cookies. The most interesting activity that a student mentioned was that he’d like
to take his mother to Costco to celebrate Mother’s Day.
Topic
3 – A descriptive piece about the wonderful qualities and times spent
with their mother. These started out with titles like “My Mom is the Best Mom
in the World” and “My Mom is Really Awesome.” Students recounted various
examples, in almost a list like fashion.
Topic
4 – Write the story of their mother’s life so far, an All About my
Mom, which included information about their mom such as when she was born,
cultural background, siblings, childhood memories, favorite things, and when
and how their parents met. This project was not just given to their mother as
an audio recording, but as a written and illustrated piece as well.
Some audio files had a portrait of their mother
accompanying it making the piece into a movie file to be watched on a computer
or formatted to be played in a DVD player. Others were straight audio files
that were put on to CDs. Methods for recording the audio can be found in one of
my past blogs on recoding Fluency Poems.
