[Teacherbee_4]

I know with Lucy Calkins and other similar series, many teachers don't get to do creative writing projects with their students, don't have the freedom to pick projects. However, if you have freedom to pick the writing projects/pieces your students do, or if you ever had the freedom, what types of pieces do/did your students do? Anyone care to share any fun writing projects? When I first started teaching we had some freedom with our writing projects and I have some ideas already. However, I'm always open for some other ones, too!

[K12ENLTeacher]

Usually I get to squeeze in a few short-lived mini-projects between those TC Lucy Calkins' mandatory units. I usually do such projects around holidays, like Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's, Earth Day. My students truly enjoy the Earth Day project as it encompasses many subjects such as writing, science, social studies, reading, and, of course math. Besides the usual recycle theme, I ask students to do research (research articles, study of media sources such as pictures; diagrams, statistics, etc). The writing usually takes 3-5 days to complete. At the end of the writing part, students do something hands-on, after which they present their projects to other students, administrators, and parents.