Today we had a special visit from Miss Manners to learn all about teasing and bullying. The class did a special activity using toothpaste. Each child shared a hurtful word that they've heard or said and for each hurtful word or phrase they squeezed out a glob of toothpaste. Then Miss Manners had the kids try to put the toothpaste back into the container. They quickly realized that it was very difficult to put the toothpaste back into the container, just like it's not easy to take back hurtful words or phrases. Miss Manners reiterated that it's important to treat people the way that you want to be treated and to always use your manners.
On Thursday, we began our brand new reading unit which, is all about series books! It was so exciting because each reading partnership was given a book from a series that they will be using to study the main characters and have book club discussions about. The first way that we have learned how to become experts on the main characters of a series is by collecting information about them. We learned how to study the front cover, title, and back blurb to learn important information about the main characters prior to even reading the text. As a class we decided to study a Frog and Toad text. Together we worked as reading detectives to collect information about Frog and Toad before we even cracked open the book. We were able to identify that Frog and Toad are best friends, they enjoy being outside, and like to fly kites. Then, the class learned a way to record this interesting information about the main characters by creating a t-chart in their notebooks. After we previewed the text we then read a few pages but, we didn't just read the text casually we read it with a purpose (to collect information on the main characters). We again noticed some interesting things about Frog and Toad by listening to their dialogue, thoughts, and noticing their actions to situations. Today we celebrated Hero Day by having different heroic professions come visit our school and teach us all about their career. It was quite interesting learning all about these amazing people and the work that they do in order to keep our country, state, and town safe. Take a look at some of our photos from our special morning and ask me to share what profession was my favorite and why. Today was an exciting day in reading as the class was separated into goal club groups! Before our vacation each child worked to self-assess their reading and determine what areas were easy for them and what was a little more challenging. They chose one area that they felt needed the most improvement on (Making your reading more fluent, Understanding literary language, or Keeping track of longer books). Today the class was put into their goal club groups, where they worked to decide on their goal, decide the tools/materials they needed to meet their goal, and the steps they will take when they meet with their club. Then at read to self today each child knew what they needed to work on in order to be prepared for their goal club meeting. They really enjoyed meeting and sharing their work with their club members and providing each other with feedback and compliments. We can't wait to see how our reading improves over the next couple of weeks!
In writing today we acted as detectives and searched a variety of texts to determine the extra quirky and fun things that authors and illustrators add to the texts to make it more entertaining. We noticed that some authors include colorful words and use fancy font to have the letters match the meaning. We also noticed how some texts included pictures on top of the page numbers to link back to the main character. Some of the books even had comics and maps that go along with the story. We then set a goal for our own writing and what we want to apply to it during our publishing phase. I can't wait to share the finished product with you!
Today visitors from the Susan B. Anthony Project came to our classroom to again teach us all about our feelings and how to cope with them. The focus of today's workshop to go over how we all have angry days when our inner monsters appear, but there are appropriate and safe ways to handle these feelings. They read us the story The Way I Feel, which is a great text that highlights different feelings and the way we act when we have these specific feelings. After the book we received a monster coloring sheet and our presenter asked us certain questions about our feelings. Certain colors represented certain responses (Do you like to sit really close to a friend or do you like some space? if you like to sit close color your nose red, if you like space color your nose green).
We have been learning how at this point in the school year we are all beginning to read or have been reading much longer books. It's been studied by reading researchers that when you start reading longer books you sometimes go off in la la land and can't remember what is happening, which is a BIG problem. As a way to help when this problem occurs there are many handy dandy strategies that can be used. These past few days we have been learning all of those different strategies and excitedly been applying them to our own reading. Take a peek at our anchor chart to see this different strategies and ask me to model them for you at home. You can also take a look at our readers hard at work! In math we have been studying 3 digit numbers and we are not pros at identifying which digit is located in a specific place. Today we learned a new game that will help build our mental math strategies with adding and subtracting 10 or 100 from a 3 digit number. The game is called Shake, Rattle, and Roll. To play you need a recording sheet, addition/subtraction cards, 3 dice, and a partner. Partner 1 rolls the 3 dice and each partner then writes down the digits that were rolled. Then each partner thinks deeply about where to place each digit to ensure they are creating the largest number possible. After, they each pick up a +/- 10/100 card and apply that to their number. They then need to write the number mentally adding or subtracting the 10 or 100 and then lastly compare their numbers to determine who had the higher one and how they know. The kids were so proud of their ability to add and subtract 10 or 100 mentally!
In writing this week we have become more cognizant of our audience (or who we are writing too). We learned special ways to ensure we are thinking deeply about our reader when we begin writing our opinion letters. As writers we learned that determining and planning out who will be reading our letters is a very important step in the writing process. In order to write a strong opinion letter to a specific reader we need to include details the reader will enjoy, get the reader interested, retell interesting parts, and make sure to not give away the ending of the text we are writing about! We sure did an amazing job of using these strategies to tailor our letters to a specific reader. Next week will begin delivering these letters to our readers!
Today is known as World Water Day and in celebration of this special day author Christine Ieronimo came to visit our school. She is the author of the book A Thirst For Home. This book is about Christine's daughters home land Ethiopia and focuses on the story of water across the world. Today she came in to share with us the importance of water and bring awareness to how much we use. The United States uses 60 gallons of water per day while in Ethopia an average person only uses about 1-2 gallons. We learned the process Ethopians need to go through in order to getting clean water. It was eye opening to see the strenuous process these individuals go through daily just to get water. After we learned all about the importance of water Christine then read her amazing for us.
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March 2016
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