Mom of the Year

I am proud to say that we already got our Mother’sDay projects finished!  This is theearliest I have ever had these projects complete...and it feels so good to beon top of it!  Curious what our projectis?  Take a look..

Isn’t that cute?  Ican’t totally claim this idea all for my own...when I came to fourth grade, twoof my teammates told me about this cute idea they do that moms love!  It is a persuasive writing piece about whyour moms should be on the cover of People Magazine.

Itake time to introduce this writing piece. We talk about People Magazine, and how in this magazine, whilethey do talk about celebrities, they have stories about normal people as well.  I talk about how only extremely specialpeople are on the cover of the magazine though, so we have to convince themthat our moms should be on the front.  Iput up this outline on the Mimeo Board...

(You can click on the picture to get your own copy!)  We talk about roles Mom plays in our life...that’sthe list we created on the side.  Then Igive the directions about the outline. This is the minimum that I want to see in their final piece.  We talk about how they can expand on this anduse their own words.  I also remind themthat in a persuasive writing piece that every reason we give should have twopieces of evidence or examples to support it.

Sooff they go getting to work on their rough drafts...while I circle the roomconferencing and providing help when needed. After they get their ideas down, they take the time to revise and edittheir piece.  When it is time for thefinal draft, I give them some special lined paper (only because it looks nicerthan loose-leaf notebook paper) to write their final piece.

Then I give the student a cover page.  To combat, the too tiny drawings that fourthgraders sometimes, I have already lightly drawn a circle on the paper and givethe student instructions mom’s head should be about the size of that circle andmake sure mom has shoulders so there are no floating heads!  I have the students outline their picturewith an ultra-fine sharpie marker.

We gluethe finished writing piece and cover on a folded read piece of constructionpaper and add a People banner to the top. Here are some more examples of finished pieces...

Do you like this idea and want to try it withyour own students?  Click here to download your own copy of the cover sheet,lined paper, and People banners.

Do you have an interesting Mother's Day project that you do with your students?  Tell me all about it!