Ask me all about being a writing detective! Today in writing we practiced being detectives by reviewing one of our small moment stories and revising punctuation and spelling. We read through two pages of Mrs. Lafferty's piece and noticed, as detectives do, that one of her pages had a lot of ands and NO PUNCTUATION! As a class we went back and helped Mrs. Lafferty revise her piece by showing her with our thumb where she should stop and add punctuation. Boy, did her piece sure sound better and make more sense once we included the ending marks. We even had the chance to work with our writing partners to go in and revise our pieces by showing where we thought they should stop and add an ending mark. Not only did we learn how to stop, read, revise, but we also learned a strategy to identify words that we aren't sure of the spelling. Whenever we are writing and we come across a word we aren't sure is spelled correctly we are going to circle it and then refer to our very special Quick Words book. This is a great tool as we each have our own individual book that has words a-z in alphabetical order, there also are lines on each page so we can add in words that we learn to spell that aren't included on the page already! We have been using this tool nonstop! You should see how much our spelling has improved!
Ask me how I am growing like a beanstalk with my reading! Today we learned another way to become stronger readers and that is to keep tabs on our comprehension. Take a look at our Animoto video on how we kept tabs on our comprehension!
Ask me to show you how to take a second grade sneak peek of a book! In reading we have started to discuss how in second grade we don't just pick up books anymore, but we take charge of our reading by beginning to choose how we should read a text. We practiced this yesterday with the text There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly and took charge by choosing how we were going to read this text. Some of us chose to read it in a very serious way, while other classmates read it in a sing-song funny way. We practiced our choice of HOW to read our text with our reading partner then took even more charge of our reading and practiced again during read to self time. Today we revisited the topic of taking charge of our reading and discussed how most authors write their stories with a certain way they should be read in mind. I shared that yesterday I just chose to read it in a serious way, but that really wasn't the intention of the author who actually meant for it to be read in a sing-song silly way. We learned that readers can decide how a book should be read by taking a sneak peek! Many of us shared how we took sneak peeks in 1st grade, but today we learned that second graders sneak peeks are even more in depth! Second graders not only look at the front cover, title, and back cover, but they also read the blurb on the back AND the table of contents before deciding HOW the book wants to be read. We were so eager to try this out today that we each chose a good fit book and practiced taking a sneak peek and sharing HOW the book wants to be read. We can't wait to practice this tonight during our 20 minutes of reading! Ask me how I can zoom into my story to make it a better piece! On Friday we learned the importance of zooming in on a small moment and adding lots of details to our writing. We began by observing sea shells with magnifying lenses and described these to our partners using our senses. "Mine has grooves and is brown. I'm noticing some pink and white colors. Mine has brown speckles all over it." We made the connection that just as scientists observe and describe what they are studying, writers also describe small important moments within their story. We discovered during our mini lesson that when our peers were describing their seashells we were able to picture what they would look like in our minds. It is important as writers to add this type of description within our stories, so that the reader can visualize it and have a deeper understanding of our story. It was interesting to see how a story can transform with the addition of details. Today we again practiced zooming in and adding sensory details to our story and even used a classmates piece as a mentor text! This student did such a wonderful job of describing the setting and zooming in on special items within her story to bring it to life. We were all so eager to put to practice what one of our classmates had modeled for us! We absolutely love writing!
Ask me how I was a peer leader today! It was such an exciting Thursday, as we paired up with Mrs. Mahar's kindergarten class to prepare dishes for the Harvest Luncheon! We learned how to be peer leaders by helping out younger students in our school. It was so much fun and so rewarding to help the kindergartners out and teach them about the Garden of Life. We even were able to harvest the tomatoes and green beans with our buddies and always modeled the appropriate behaviors in the garden. We absolutely loved being peer leaders today and can't wait to do it again! Make sure to check out our delicious dishes at the Harvest Luncheon on September 25th! Ask me all about my family tree! We have been learning all about our families and that a family tree is a way to show our families through the generations. It has been a blast working with Mrs. Sweet to bring in the aspect of art and a hands on experience to create these family trees. This experience is helping us to have a deeper understanding of family members and how they are all connected. We also brought home an interview today and can't wait to ask an adult some questions to learn about where our families come from and our heritage. It is so interesting to learn about our classes family and heritage and see things that we have in common and differences that we have. Ask me all about the word stamina! Today we discussed what stamina is and how it's important to have in order to become better learners. We learned that stamina is how long you can work on something without losing focus. During our reading workshop we have been discussing the 3 ways to read a text: read the pictures, read the words, retell the story and how we read to self. We created a chart of what is expected during our read to self time: read the whole time, have a space bubble between readers, get started right away, read a good fit book, don't talk with peers, and quiet whisper read. We even had students model the appropriate way and inappropriate way to act during read to self time. Then we were challenged to read to self for 5 minutes following our read to self behaviors. We unfortunately were unsuccessful the first two times at this challenge but, on the third try we were successful! We learned that if at first you don't succeed try try again! We even decided to set a class goal of working towards 20 minutes of read to self time! We are so excited to work on our stamina and get better at reading!
Ask me all about how my family is alike and different from the Critter family! In social studies we have started to talk about families and discuss similarities and differences among them. Yesterday we paired up with our reading partner and brainstormed all the different things that families can, have, and are. It was so interesting to see all the different ideas that we came up with. Today we listened to the text This is My Family by Mercer Mayer and learned all about Little Critters family. It was so much fun noticing all the ways each of our families were similar to Little Critter and also how they were different. We even were able to learn about Mrs. Lafferty's family by using a Venn Diagram to see what was alike and different between her family and the Critter family. We are so excited for tomorrow because we get to fill in our own Venn Diagram to compare our family to the Critter family.
Next week we are so eager and excited to team up with Mrs. Sweet to create our very own family tree! We will need pictures and names of our family members so we can create this tree with as many family members as possible. We then will be using these family trees to launch conversations about our heritage, culture, and traditions to learn about the diversity in our classroom. We can't wait to dig deeper into our family history and share our uniqueness with the class! Ask me all about the story How I Spent My Summer Vacation! Today during writing we read a fictional story about this child Wallace who shares with his class his summer vacation adventure. We noticed that Wallace tended to stretch the truth or exaggerate what actually happened during his summer. He shared how he was going to his Aunt's house, but was "kidnapped" by cowboys and he actually became a cowboy himself! After reading the story we were challenged to write our own story about our summer vacation. We had the choice of writing what we actually did or we could exaggerate and write a creative summer vacation story. It was so much fun thinking back to the summer and jumping into writing. We were all eager to show Mrs. Lafferty our writing skills and all that we had learned during first grade! We can't wait to share these stories with you at Open House on September 16th!
Ask me all about the text What If Everybody Did That? Today we read this story by Ellen Javernick and saw what would happen if everyone did something. For example, what if everyone threw just ONE can of soda out the window...what would happen? We used this book as a mentor to help us think about our classroom and brainstorm what if ideas. We had some great examples, "What if everyone sat in the same seat? What if everyone said good morning? What if everyone hit each other?" We worked diligently on brainstorming four different what if examples, writing about them, and drawing corresponding pictures. Then we even worked collaboratively with our table mates to discuss rules that we thought should be in place to have a fun and safe learning environment. We each shared out some of our rules to the whole class and decided on a few for our class promise. Ask me what rules are on our class promise! |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2016
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