Saturday Sayings and Miracle-Gro

Already, it's time for installment number 3 with Tammy- Forever in First, Julie- Lighting a Fire in Third Grade, and Sandi- Literacy Minute.  Our month of Saturday Sayings are going fast!  Be sure to check out what they have to say today.

Growing writers is like growing a garden.  There is a lot of hard work involved.  You have to get down in the dirt and get messy.  There is a lot of tilling of the fertile soil to be done and planting the seeds.  After all that, then you have to tend to it and pull out those pesky weeds.  But in the end, you have this big pay off of beautiful flowers, all unique in their own way- individual and different, but all beautiful in their own way!


I love to teach writing and love to see the growth from my young writers.  But is hard work!  Children need the time to practice their writing daily to be able to get better at it.  We must also model for children how to write.  We won't get that good growth in our writing gardens if no modeling is being done.  Children need to see you write and hear your thoughts as you go through the process.  My motto has always been: model, model, model!  They will grow as writers given the daily time and the modeling.

I only have 30 minutes per day with my students, so I feel the crunch of time- big time!!  But when I've had to rush and then feel the frustration that my students didn't "grow" like I wanted that day, I have to be honest with myself and ask:  Did I model for them how to write? If not, I know I had better do a better job of tending to my garden next time so beautiful flowers and not weeds are growing there!

How is your garden growing???  Big and beautiful?  Or not enough growth and too many weeds?  Where is the Miracle-Gro when we need it????