BOLD Beginnings!

Each year I'm dying with excitement to teach Bold Beginnings. It's like I want to just jump right in and skip every other important piece of writing because once I teach kids about Bold Beginnings, their writing becomes amazing! 

So last week my world became complete. I was able to teach my 2nd graders the best thing ever, BOLD BEGINNINGS! Yay! I love it!

OK, rewind. . . I was also really impressed by how well my students picked up on this temporal words activity. 

We put together the temporal word notebook page in out Interactive Notebooks. The students will use it to reference while writing. Right now, the kids are writing a personal narrative after tons of class practice.

Interactive Notebooks, where have you been my whole life?

I just love how the kids have these notes to look  back on. 

OK back to the Bold Beginnings!

It all started with this book.

It's filled with sounds heard throughout a city, which is a great way to introduce onomatopoeia.  

 That's a real life kid page right there.

We put together this notebook page and wrote a Bold Beginning under each flap. The kids had so much fun making the Oo oo! Ah ah! noises of a monkey.

Once we tried out each B.B., we chose a new topic. . . Halloween!

Kids worked in groups to write all four of the B.B.

Here is our collection of Bold Beginnings.

The thing I enjoy most about teaching writing is teaching kids to let go of spelling. 

"Don't worry about your spelling!" I say. And once kids let go, you get some great writing.

More practice. More fun!

Today my students had to apply this new learning to their narratives. Each was able to write four different Bold Beginnings to topics of their choosing. I was so proud of them.
The best part, they had fun writing!

Mission accomplished.