Writing: Conducting the Orchestra

Tomorrow is the end of the trimester.
So, the past couple of days I've had to slow down on the amount of things on our to do list since some of my turtles needed a chance to catch up with their writing assignments.
You know, since I've been trying to help them understand that SOMETHING is better than NOTHING in the grade book.  
I'm a nice teacher like that.  
To be quite honest, this is the first year that these kids have had letter grades on their report card.  They don't fully understand what all the letters mean - though I've been talking about them all year long.  It probably won't be until the Trimester assembly that it really clicks and they want Honor Roll.
At that point it will be a "You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit" type of moment.
It's a learning experience...
It really has felt like I'm conducting an orchestra in class during this catch up time.  It's been such a big couple of days with kids finishing up Summer Sandwiches (due the 3rd week of school), Personal Narratives (due the 5th week), Favorite Ecosystem (due the 7th week), and their own personal Risk and Consequences (due this week - tie into our Reading unit).
Not to mention that so many other things happened this past week with Cereal Box Book Reports, end of the unit assessments, STAR reading tests, CA Tribe file folder reports... It's been a big week and it's not over yet!
The rest of the kids - my perfect angels - that are completely caught up with all their work, well I gave them a file folder today and told them they could decorate it as their writing folder.  I have been keeping all their final drafts to save for parent conferences, and I wanted an easy way to store them and add to them in the future weeks.  It was like I gave them gold.  They had so much fun, and it encouraged the others to keep going in their work so they too could experience the joy.  
It really is the easy things in life...