Weird Holidays and Explanatory Writing

It's that time of year when many of us celebrate the holidays. Old traditions are revisited and perhaps introduced to the newest generation and new traditions and celebrations are started.

I remember drinking from this fountain as a kid, my kids do too.
Now my grandblessings are getting their opportunity.
Maybe this is a new tradition...

These cousins are enjoying holiday celebrations together.

Adding some snow makes celebrating the holidays REALLY fun.

The Littles are enjoying finding all the Santas on their great-grandparent's tree.

Although the traditional holidays are now upon us, have you ever considered celebrating such holidays as Pickle Day, National Mutt Day, Waffle Day, or Lima Bean Respect Day? This link shares Weird Holidays for most every day of the year with many dates having multiple unique celebrations. 

As a tie-in to the holidays, I went through the links on this site and found a number of weird celebrations that would grab students' interest and be appropriate for them to explore. Using the Pages app where I had placed some of these descriptive links, students selected one, read through it and began an explanatory/summarizing writing activity. 

Here is the link to the template I used for this assignment. Weird Holidays Pages Template. 

I starred the articles that were a bit lengthier with their shared facts.

Students were tasked to address the following items within their writing.

*Introduce and explain what your holiday selection was about.
*Explain the history of this weird holiday.
*In your own words, tell some interesting facts about the holiday.
*In the conclusion tell how someone can celebrate this holiday.

To help students understand how to go about this assignment I modeled what I wanted them to do by  choosing the "America Recycles Day" link and read the article aloud while students followed along. Next, I demonstrated my thinking as I went item by item above, found the info in the article, and reworded it while typing it on the Smartboard.

Aluminum cans can go from the recycle bin back to the store shelves in two months!
Who knew?

This is the written example I modeled for students as we thought through the article together.

One of our technology specialists helping us use the Schoolwork app.

During the next session one of our district's technology specialists came into my classroom to guide students to use the Schoolwork app. Schoolwork is a way to share and collaborate with students. It gives me access to everyone's writing in real time so I can see what progress students are making. This app allows me to offer support and give direct student feedback immediately.

Students discovered a few things to make this writing activity flow a bit better.

Students were shown how to use a split screen to go
 back and forth between the article and their writing with ease.

The divider between the split screens can be adjusted accordingly.
Can we celebrate National S'mores Day every day?

Not sure what a word means? One student shared how she discovered that by tapping and highlighting a word, a dictionary definition of that words pops up to help with comprehension.

Another student found that an arrow on the top lefthand side of the keyboard has a formatting feature. When the "tab" option is clicked it formats the writing to automatically indent paragraphs.

As I popped in and out of various student screens to see how their writing was going via my iPad, I was super excited to try out giving immediate feedback. I first tried it out by recording a quick encouragement using the audio feature and discovered that the recording indicator pops up on the student's screen. Since the student wasn't expecting it, he viewed it as a "pop-up" distraction and deleted it right away. 

Next I sent a line of feedback text and found that a writing bubble comes up on the student's screen. The written line then pops up in the middle of their writing. Prior to starting a project on Schoolwork, it's a great idea to let students know how these feedback communications will look when they receive them.

I found this student was really interested in French fry Day! 
He shared that Americans eat over 30 pounds of French fries per person a year!

As a way for students to begin their editing process, they were introduced to the accessibility tools on the iPad, specifically focusing on text to speech. On the iPad it's called Speak Screen and Speak Selection. Since the Weird Holiday template had a lot of verbiage on it, students were shown how to navigate Speak Selection to listen to their writing. They utilized the CUPS strategy of Capitals, Usage/Understanding, Punctuation, and Spelling. Students are being taught to use these tools for learning.

The highlighted portion is what the text to speech voice reads.
Students are able to hear their mistakes and address them.

When asked if the text to speech tool was helpful, every student raised their hand. Students commented that they were able to hear when they had missed a word. Misused words also popped out. For example, a student could hear when they had spelled "they" instead of "the" because it didn't make sense. Someone said the voice paused in a place that didn't make sense so she knew she had placed the comma in the wrong spot. One girl commented that she "kept expecting the voice to pause and take a breath but it wouldn't stop, it just kept going like the Energizer Bunny!" She realized she needed to go back and figure out where to place punctuation marks.

Students were excited to read about the Weird Holidays that people actually celebrate. One student loved bacon so much, not only did he choose National Bacon Day but also just happened to wear the perfect shirt that day!

By the way, today is National Roof Over Your Head Day! 

Be sure to celebrate that roof!