November 2 -6

Week 11

Growing as writers

We already have some fantastic authors in our classroom, but the best kind of author is one that continues to grow and improve their writing. That is the exact thing that we’ve been working on this week.

Adding Details

I noticed that one area that the kids could all grow in was adding details to their writing. We’ve talked about turning boring sentences to wow sentences. We’ve used some of my writing from my writer’s notebook to practice adding details. Might I add, when it came to my writing the kids were VERY honest about what they thought was a “boring sentence”, but even more important they had some fantastic ideas for how to turn those boring sentences into wow sentences. 

Mentor Texts

One of my favorite authors is Patricia Polacco. She is a fantastic author who has a way of touching her readers, making them feel like their in the story, and teaching a lesson with her stories. Last week we looked at her book Thundercake and discussed what we appreciated about her writing. This week the kids worked in groups to choose their own Patricia Polacco books to read, and digest. They gave us a summary of the book and then told us their appreciations of her work. The students have been using Patricia’s writing and author’s crafts to incorporate into their own writing!

Subject/Predicate

We have also been discussing Subjects and predicates. A student asked, “why do we need to know this”.  I simply told them that it will be good practice for questions they could possibly see on their state standardized test at the end of the year. I do believe that spending some time focusing on subject and predicate has helped some of our kids write more complete sentences within their stories.

Native Americans

Our study of Native Americans has been AWESOME!!!  I don’t believe I’ve seen the kids this engaged all year! They come in talking about Native Americans and leave our of class talking about them! From their clothing to the games they played to their houses, there is nothing that the kids don’t want to know or talk about. I hate that we are wrapping up our unit on Native Americans, but I’m convinced that we will continue to learn more things and have more discussion about it!

Indoor Recess

Rain, rain, go away!!! We’ve spent a lot of time inside and we are all miss going out to recess. For the first few days many of the kids got on their chromebooks. I love the use of technology, but I would much rather the kids “do something”! So I told them that all technology was off limits. BEST IDEA EVER! The kids started organizing their own games, teams, and even creating new games to play. Some of them decided to illustrate and their artistic abilities were evident! Who knew indoor recess could be so much fun!!

Math

The kids are doing so well with their multiplication and division! We are continuing to practice these skills and we are also reviewing and building on our time telling skills. Time can be quite hard of concept to understand. The kids are working very hard and I'm sure that they are continuing to practice at home! 

Celebrating Stephon’s Birthday

Stephon celebrated his birthday on Friday! As we always do for the birthday students, we presented him with his card that morning during morning meeting. His family cam later that day with some treats and the most amazing treat bags ever! There were lots of games and props in the treat bags! The kids really enjoyed themselves!