After two months of the students writing in the journals that had prompts, I finally introduced Free Write! Free Write is when students have the opportunity to write about whatever they choose. This is no small feat. Before we began, I asked each child to tell me something they like or something that happened to them over the weekend. Then we discussed using best guess spelling and the Heart Word wall to help us write what we want to say. I did an example on the white board, and once I felt like all the students were comfortable with the task at hand, I passed out their sparkling  new journals.

The results were exciting! Below are some journal entries that demonstrate the different levels of writing in our class. When space permits, I always rewrite what the students have written in order to model capitalization, punctuation, spacing, and spelling. Enjoy! (Make sure you scroll all the way to the end for a good laugh!)