Writing with SWAG

LEAP is up and running and we're having a blast with our group of 23 students at Seymour Dual Language Academy.  Kids are already hard at work solving problems in their community from abuse of dogs to smoking.  But today began on a discouraging note.  Our field trip to the zoo had to be postponed because of thunderstorms.

Our fall back plan was to watch a zoo-themed movie, and for a while the kids were settled on the big, multi-colored carpet, watching Zootopia.  But first one, and then more kids walked away from the show and -- entirely on their own -- started writing at their tables.  We've been teaching them to write with SWAG by making sure each sentence:

• Starts with a capital letter
• is Written neatly
• has A space between each word, and
• uses Given punctuation (a period, question mark, or exclamation point).

The kids started writing each word on separate index cards (so they could be sure to leave a space between each word), then taped the words together to form a sentence.  And what great sentences they wrote!  We handed out markers and helped students sound out words, but the work was all their own. Here's a sample of their sentences:

"My Mom and Dad are cool because they love me."

"I love my Mom and my Dad and my brother."

"I love my teachers."

and "I love summer school."

Some of the students started taping their long strips of words into crowns.  

Gotta love kids, who on a rainy day, with a cancelled field trip, decide they'll work on building sentences!

If you'd like to support these awesome kids -- you can donate here.