I threw the kids a curve during journal time. A few are complaining about too much writing, so I zigged. [Or did I zag?]

Today, they could only use six words to describe their summer break. [I don’t want them to put their summer break in the past just yet.]

My hope: Squeeze their thinking, make them focus on the most helpful/descriptive nouns, verbs, or adjectives to recreate that time.

I gave them pieces of cash register tape for their final draft to be pinned on the graffiti bulletin board.

[Yep, there was a short discussion about hyphenated words being treated as single words. I officially broke my own six-word rule and the kids aren’t letting me forget it.]