I love inspiring children to write.  During my years in the classroom, I began every morning with an inspiring “Thought for the Day.”  Students wrote a short paragraph as a journal entry.  The thought for the day was either a quotation or saying that stimulated their thinking skills.  The best part was watching them write intently and share their comments with the class.

Many of the writing prompts started classroom discussions about a controversial subject.  I remember the day students wrote about this saying, “Let your conscience be your guide.” What would you do if only one hot dog was left and neither you nor the person in line behind you had received one?  Some children felt it was fine to take the last hot dog since they were the next in line.  Many suggested sharing the hot dog and a few wanted to give the other child the hot dog and go without.  Interesting!  Conscience is a hard concept to understand, but by talking about how you would feel with your action, seemed to get the point across.

One of my colleagues suggested arranging the quotations and sayings into different character building traits.  For example, February’s theme is Love/Honesty/Valentines Day/Presidents/Integrity. Parents and teachers love being able to build on the themes.  The off-shoot from Thought for the Day, is Kid’s Writing Journal.  Same idea but children have lines to write on, in their own journals.

Memorization of quotations or poetry seems to be a lost art.  But anything you memorize stays with you all your life.  Memorization also helps the brain by making synaptic connections.  Encourage students to memorize two or three quotes or sayings each month.

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It’s beginning to feel a little like fall here in Southern California. We don’t
have real seasons so we determine that it must be fall because all the
summer tourists have gone home! I miss the excitement of teaching full
time in the classroom. I was always as excited as the kids on the first day of
school…learning new names, discovering who each child is inside, and
knowing I may be able to influence and encourage these bright little stars!

But now, autumn means speaking at Teacher Seminars and that is always
fun for me. I love to share with teachers, the memory ideas I’ve developed
and collected. My first seminar is on Nov. 2nd and 3rd in Palm Springs, CA.
It’s the NCTM conference (National Conference for Teachers of
Mathematics). Hope to see some of you there!

I would love to hear from you. I’m always anxious to hear about some of
your memory tips and also what may be an area in which you need help.
You can comment on this blog or drop me a line at my email address:
donnalyn@memoryjoggers.com

All Memory Joggers products come with an unconditional 30-day money back guarantee.