On the Weekend

A practical routine for Monday morning is to have your students share and write about their weekend. There are ways you can make it more engaging for students as their confidence grows.

A Monday morning recount as a regular fixture on your schedule will also bring some consistency to your teaching and class community. Start with a straightforward lesson format and as the year progresses think of ways to make it more creative.

To help your students unpack the features of a retelling or recount, model how to share about your weekend. You may like to use the printable accents from our Retell Rainbow and point out each section as you share. Keep it fairly simple to start - you are teaching the structure here, not detailed descriptive writing at this stage. 

Let students share in a way that suits your program - choose a few students each week to share to the whole class, let students turn-and-talk to a peer or group or have a day of the week designated to each child and allocate a 'news' or sharing time. 

Transition to writing by having your students record the main parts of their oral recount. They can draw, write a few words or sentences if able. This butterfly from our Coloring Club craft page works well - and as a bonus you can create a class display. Alternatively you could project it onto your board and model one recount from a student who shared with the class - writing collaboratively with yoru students. 

Later in the week students can take their butterfly (writing plan) and create a longer piece of text with additional detail and descriptive writing. Perhaps in a journal or typed into the computer. 



To support spelling in writing have a word wall up for students to access. Our one page word wall makes a lovely alphabet frieze while supporting your students independence.



I'll pop back with another blog post next weekend with a few more tips for a Monday morning recount.