Weekend Writing Journal: Meet Sparky!

Our district has a two-hour delay today. Yay!!! Instead of refreshing the school website every 5 minutes to see if we have closed instead, I figured I'd update this blog.

Over the summer, I stumbled upon this post by Scholastic and was inspired to create my own class mascot. I immediately went on Amazon and bought this dude:

I introduced him to the class in the beginning of the year and he stayed on my desk for months. I got questions about him almost every single day but I never found the right time to officially introduce him. A few weeks ago, I made time for him. As a class, we came up with some ideas for possible names and then we took a vote. They came up with some really cute ones! Chubby was my favorite but in the end the class votes showed Sparky was the winner.

The kids were so excited to have a part in naming him but they were even more excited when I said Sparky would go home with them on the weekends! I bought a notebook from the dollar store and created the cover above. I laminated the cover because I know it's going to get a lot of wear and tear! Every Friday I send Sparky home in a little backpack with the journal. The students are supposed to bring it back in the next school day, usually Monday and then share with the class about what they did. 

 I created a parent letter describing the project and also included a calendar of when each student would take Sparky home. This way parents could let me know if that wasn't a good weekend (ex: going on a vacation, wedding that weekend, etc.) 

I taped this letter inside the journal so parents and students have an idea of what to write about. Now that we're a few weeks in, most of them will probably just refer to the other journal entries from students.

Here's an example of the calendar. Underneath the black is where all of the students' names are. This helps parents know when their weekend is coming up.

It has been so much fun reading the entries.  I had one student who brought it back to school without any writing. It made me a little sad but at least he brought it back! I have some student work samples below. This student really went above and beyond!

Sparky had an indoor snowball fight. So cute! 

Sparky played school and got a report card!

I put the journal in my writing center. When students have extra time or finish their work early, they can read the journal and spend some time with Sparky.

I hope you enjoyed this post. I love this project and can't wait to see what else my kids come up with! Do you use a weekend writing journal in your classroom or a class mascot?

Clipart Credit