[NCteacher]

For the last few years, I have had my kids writing reader's response letters- in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. They write a weekly letter to me about a book. They must be 2 paragraphs long and the first paragraph must have the title of the book,underlined, the author's name and the main idea stated in no more than 2 sentences. The other paragraph is reserved for their thinking about the book, what the liked, disliked, etc. The biggie with that one is getting them to explain WHY they felt that way. They have gotten really good at this. I write each of them back and it is really cool to have this private conversation going on all year between me and each of my students. It is tedious and time consuming to answer their letters, but that does help motivate them- they love getting the letters back from me. I count mine as a Reading and Writing grade. All of my mini lessons in grammar and spelling are driven by those letters. Right now we are working on there, their and they're. That is turning out to be a challenge!