My Seed Book

Seed books... No, not for planting in the garden.  But for planting seeds of thought for writing during writer's workshop.

We've all had that student that cannot think of a thing to write about during writing time, but they come in almost every morning with some huge story they MUST tell you right away.  Like how they were playing outside last night and saw this cool snake and chased it away or on the way to school that morning their baby sister got sick and threw up all in the car and Mom was NOT happy!

Well, this is a great way to help those students and all our students to collect those story ideas for later so they don't forget them.  

Whenever your students come in with this great exciting tale, ask them to jot a few key words (after modeling this in a lesson first of course) in their seed book.  Then they can get the seed books out when they feel like they don't have anything to write about that day.  This boy's key words were Florida, swim, and ocean for one idea.  His other idea on this page was wrestling guys. These two ideas have great promise to make a couple of wonderful stories!

This girl loves her kitty, but he runs away.  This would make a great story about feelings. 

The booklet I used for the seed book and the pencils are all from Palomino Pencils.  I was able to try out some of their products and I must say they really are great!  The pencils sharpen well without breaking and have really good erasers that actually erase without leaving those black smudges.  The colored pencils were smooth and they even have fancy pencils for rewarding students.  You need to check them out!  

http://www.pencils.com/category/brand/california-republic/palomino