Black and White Tie Affair Writing Event 2015

Y'all, it happened.

It finally happened!!

Snow days and delays didn't hold us back yesterday.

Our much anticipated Black and White Tie Affair Writing Event was a HUGE success!

I could not be more proud of my kiddos.

We had many staff members and families attend, even our superintendent came!

 

The stage was set for our movie premiere to begin!

 

We began our event with a slideshow.

After welcoming our families, staff, and administrative guests, I introduced the "Writing Stars" for our movie premiere.

Each student had their own slide and walked down the white carpet to take a front row seat for the premiere. 

 

Next, we discussed how we began our penguin unit.

A package arrived from Antarctica for our class. We opened the package to discover this tiny penguin with instructions on how to grow our penguin!

(For those of you wishing to purchase this, it came from Scholastic with the water book shown in the bottom right picture.)

 

Then we began how we do every day, by chorally reciting our standards and purpose for learning.

 

Our informative anchor charts were our next topic of discussion, along with how we were specific and focused by using the academic language we had learned throughout our research.

 

We shared the multiple resources we had used to gather our research.

(Articles from my Black and White Tie Affair Writing Event)

 Pierre was our favorite mentor text that we read, so we just had to share more about Pierre and how we have been watching his colony online from the California Academy of Science's live penguin cams .

 

Next we shared about the writing process.

We used our research journals to collect and gather information, which in turn helped us create our draft. Revising and editing were next on our agenda, followed by publishing our final copy.

We targeted our techonology standard SL2.5 by digitally recording our writing and compiling them into our movie premiere.

Before we get to the actual video, I wanted to share a little behind-the-scenes prep.

I purchased these penguins and black napkins from Wal-Mart. They were absolutely perfect for our event.



 I just opened the napkin, placed about a handful of penguins inside and used the white curling ribbon to close. I purchased 3 bags of penguins and made about 36 bags.

 

 For our tables, I used black cloth tablecloths (borrowed from my mom), with a white plastic tablecloth runner down the middle (Wal-Mart, 3 pack for $2 and some change). I used LED candles (small pillars are 2 for $2.50 at Wal-Mart, the larger pillars came in a 4 pack for $13) and silver sequins and black star confetti to decorate the tables.

Our "white carpet" was also a white tablecloth. 

I had black and white balloons and black and white stars decorating the rest of the room and doorway.

 One of my sweet parents brought these in for a little treat for the kids!

So thoughtful!!

 

We were so very fortunate to have one of our tech experts and our Technology Leadership Team at school help me compile all of the student recordings into one research video.
To create one class video, we took one section from each student's research and complied all of the clips into one video.
(You will see Pierre and his colony in the background of the video.)



After our movie premiere, the kids took their writing and shared with families, staff, and administration.

I know I already said it, but seriously, I was SO proud of my kids!

Just to hear them sharing the steps they took throughout the process and all of the knowledge they have about penguins was amazing.

 

If you're interested in your own Black and White Tie Affair Writing Event, click below!

I also have an Around the Campfire Writing Event you can see here.