Piggie and Elephant Day!

Today we invited in the first grade class to share our Piggie and Elephant books.  Each 2nd grade partnership read the Mo Willems' Piggie and Elephant books they've been practicing with the focus of reading with expression.  We also shared the books we wrote ourselves.  Our goal in writing our own books was to capture the personality of these two lovable characters.  We've so enjoyed this character study and writing unit!  We celebrated our day with some Piggie and Elephant cake as well! I love to see how proud the students are of their work, and how excited they are to share it.

My son, Mason, who is now in 4th grade also stopped by to share the Piggie and Elephant book he wrote in my class as a 1st grader.  Piggie and Elephant Day came to be when he sat down at our kitchen table one day and started writing his own Piggie and Elephant book.  This sparked the idea that the whole class could do this, and then we could celebrate our hard work.  I also think it's a great example for the class to show how progress in our writing and spelling and handwriting takes time and effort. We were able to look at Mason's first grade work and say, "Hey, look at these great ideas! There may be words that are spelled wrong or letters going the wrong way, and that is part of the process for us as we grow into better writers through practice!"  The class had many thoughtful questions for Mason about his writing process.  What a fun afternoon!