Lesson Follow-up

I really love free writes and authentic writing. I feel that I don't have enough time to do this type of writing as often as I’d like. Even though my students had directions for this writing activity, I felt that the kids really took it and went with it in their own way. I hadn't done an activity like this before and the kids loved it. The grizzly bear footage was behind glass, and the area I was in was partly underwater. We watched one bear fish for live fish, then a second bear came and the first bear defended his territory. The bears got aggressive. They played and splashed in the water and jumped off the rocks. The kids thought it was neat. Next time, I would make this a longer activity. Rather than watching all 3 videos and choosing one to write on, I would break it up and maybe do one at a time, focusing on different parts of speech. Maybe the first write would include the three sentence types we've learned this year. The next write may need to include a list using commas in a series, etc. All in all I felt that it was a successful activity. :)