One of my English Language Learners. We are working hard on learning the letters of the alphabet and some simple words. He is a trooper.

Working so hard on writing. HUGE accomplishment. She's working on a chapter book about her favorite cartoon. Characters recycled, but storyline is unique. Also - she found her glasses. I want to tape them to her.
Peer editing champions. These girls worked for a full 40 minutes on adding feelings and correct punctuation to a play they are writing. Every time I heard them, they were reading their lines out loud and then making changes to the writing so that the "reader will know how to say it." Sigh.

As an aside, the girl sitting facing the camera is new this year. Her mom brought her and 3 older siblings to our area for more opportunities - from Saudi Arabia. The mom spent days - weeks- months working long days and nights with her children to teach them English so they would not fall behind in school. You'd never know that just 1 year ago she didn't know any English. Except, well, I'm telling you. In her story she wanted one of the characters to have an Australian accent, which, in her mind, meant naming the parents in the story "Momyo" (mom-e-oh) and "Dadyo" (Dad-e-oh).

I am so proud of my authors. They just created their very own writing rubric from scratch, and we have been practicing using the rubric on sample writing. They have amazing input, and actually debate each other on the evidence to support the rubric in the piece we're studying. They actually cheered when I told them that tomorrow we'd be using the rubric on their own writing. Hooray for ownership over their writing!