My Secret Weapon

Today was our last full day of school before a long awaited and much anticipated Christmas break. Tomorrow is a half day, and it hardly counts as a school day since the day will be spent eating, partying, gifting, and singing Christmas carols. A fun day.

This week has been an interesting one, though. The week before Christmas break always is.
Today, being the last real day of school, the kids were... err... umm.. well... how do I put this nicely? Crazy!

Lucky for me, I have a secret weapon.

I have a special class activity that I store in my back pocket for days like today... days where the students are wild and riled and can barely sit still.

:Drum Roll Please:
My secreat weapon is.........

The passback story.

It goes something like this. The class comes up with a couple of story starters. Today our focus was Christmas. When the teacher says, "Go" each student chooses a story starter and begins to write. They have to continue to write until I say STOP. At that time they must do exactly that, stop. It doesn't matter if they are mid-word, mid-sentence, or mid-letter. They must immediately stop and pass their story to the person behind/ next-to/ infront of them(depending on the passing order).

When they get the next story they must quickly read what has been written and continue the story where the last person left off.

It goes on like this for as long as I deem reasonable, and on the last pass I always tell the students to bring the story to a close.

When the stories are completed they are returned to the original writer, and students spend the rest of the class period reading their stories aloud to the class.

Now, this may or may not sound like an interesting activity to you. But let me tell you... this activity is a HIT. I have done this activity for four years now and it has never failed me. Every student is completely engaged and entertained. I love listening to their absolute silent, focused writing and then their giggles and gasps in response to what they read in their newly acquired stories after each pass.

All the students want to share their stories with the class after they are finished writing, and they all proclaim their story to be the best.

Today at the end of class after completing this activity, a few of my students stayed after and told me that we should do this activity more often.

Hmm...
I think not.

I certainly wouldn't want anyone to ever grow tired of the activity that is my savior on crazy days like the last full day before Christmas break.

For this reason, I would like to take a moment to say thank you, passback story. Because of you, I have managed to survive many-a-last-day-before-break with my sanity intact.