Monday Made It: A Name Study

I'm linking up with Tara at 4th Grade Frolics for another Monday Made It!!!  This is really a Monday Re-Made It.  I have been doing this activity for the past 6 years, but I inherited all the worksheets from my dear sweet teaching partner Lisa, who we lost to cancer a little over a year ago.  This year I finally had the heart to remake the worksheets and add my own flair.

It has been a tradition at our school for the fourth grade students to study their names and complete their very first writing assignment during the first full week of school.  I absolutely LOVE this project!  We begin the lesson by sharing with our groups one thing we like about our names and one thing we don't.

I then read the story Chrysanthemum and we take some time to share about similar experience we may have had with our names.  I have them complete a worksheet brainstorming what they might already know about their name and where it came from.  You can get a copy here.

Their homework that night (the very first homework assignment of the school year) is to interview their parents about their name.  You can also snag a copy of this one here.  When they return with their homework I give them some time to find the meaning of their name using books and this website.  They love this part!

Then we spend a ton of time talking about writing.  I share a sample paragraph I wrote about my name and ask the students to think about how their name stories could be put into a paragraph.  We carefully read the story and I have them write certain sentences in their heads as we read.  We call this Brain Writing....you'll never believe this, but they really like writing in their heads much more than they do on paper :)  We all begin with the same sentence to start our paragraphs "My name is....." I really think having this first sentence down on paper helps so many of them move forward in writing.  Sometimes that first sentence is the hardest one to write.

Of course we do a second draft because we ALWAYS edit!  After they edit with a friend they write their final draft!!!  How cute is this one?!?!

Our final activity is to brainstorm a list of adjectives that describe us, nouns that have special meaning to us, and names of individuals who are important in our lives.  Here's the worksheet I use for brainstorming!
 

We then use that brainstorming page to create a word cloud on Tagxedo.

If you haven't used Tagxedo, you just have to.  It's so simple, and you can totally customize your cloud....which fourth graders love....this is, by far, their very favorite part of this entire project.  Another bonus....they make a super cute bulletin board!!!  I had hoped to have a super cute picture of our bulletin board, but it's not ready yet....going in this afternoon to put it together!

Other books I use during our week long name study:

Hope some of you can use this back to school activity and I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to hear how your students like it!!!