I totally forgot it was kindergarten day. My advanced class remembered, so they had 15 minutes to write summer birthday cards. Luckily there were only three. Before that, we did the embedded reading that I had put together from their suggestions (yesterday??) — I didn’t catch the donkeys and the elephants as being political, nor the reference to Ralph Nader, but they were all laughing as the story progressed.
The intermediate class was reading so well that I asked them to gesture the story to one another. That meant that one kid would be reading and gesturing, and the other would be trying to say what the first was communicating. Really, all I want is for them to read it a thousand times, and this keeps them from noticing that. Next, I’ll probably have them draw group pictures, trying to keep all the information in the pictures so that they can tell the story together. Hear it/read it, over and over again…