It happened!

Every teacher lives for the moment when the clouds split, a bright light shines down from above, and amazing music plays in the background because a lesson comes together creating pure teaching perfection! I had a 45 minute chunk of time that was phenomenal. And, I am not afraid to brag about it!
Let me set the stage:
We have been studying animals. We classified animals on Brainpop,jr.com and found out how animals camouflage themselves. We read the second lesson today in Chapter 8 of our science books. It just so happened we were discussing parts of animals and insects. I transitioned from the science book smoothly and passed out a worksheet about insect parts. I drew my own insect on the board and I labeled it with the appropriate parts. We completed the worksheet and set it aside in our take home folder. When I asked the children to take out their writer's workshop journals the magic happened. I made up a funny statement about my insect. I briefly described what I wanted the children to produce(an insect with the appropriate parts, labeled, and given a voice) and it was all I could do to contain the creativity and knowledge that exploded from your children! As a matter of fact, I put no constraints on the creativity other than it could not be violent...other than a little bug juice! :o) The children are beginning to write sentences beautifully, but that is not what I wanted today. I wanted labels, I wanted detail, and I wanted voice. They gave it to me!
There were speech bubbles and
weather controlling insects( ... seriously, click on this picture and see just how this insect controls the weather!) and
super powers and

pop stars and
transformers and
Caley Shayley Bayley bugs and
alien bugs with big feet and
super, swirly, whirly antennas and
a wonder fly and
insects better than it's predators and
bad bees!


Then, we moved on to patterning in math.