Ninth Week: October 27-31

    Writing took children in several directions with the introduction of a creative writing activity for which each chose an animal as a main character and gave it a name. Then they created imaginary stories following the circular pattern of If You Take a Mouse to School, plugging in their chosen animals. By next week, parent volunteers typists will start to see these edited drafts coming to them to be typed into finished works which the children will illustrate before I put them into a class book form.  Of course, other writing projects are still being finished up. Several children were also ready to begin a final written response to our Core Literature book. Putting themselves into a situation similar to Rosa, they decided what they would save up money for if they had lost their house, explaining how they would earn the money and why they made the choice.

    After the second reading of A Chair for My Mother paired up with a classroom buddy, there were several types of response activities to complete. Beyond three questions that focused on evidence that the book was set in an urban community and the motivation of the neighbors to help out, they compared Rosa's community to ours using a Venn diagram after we discussed this. Observing that the beginning of the book was not actually the beginning of Rosa's story, they did a timeline by cutting and pasting the events in Rosa's family's "story" in order. Lastly, they thought about any T-S (Text-to Self) or T-W (Text-to-World) connections that they had as their own schema with the book. For Readers' Workshop time, new contracts with several new centers were introduced. Reading groups are beginning new books- both fiction and nonfiction. In Word Study, we began constructing words that include the glued "closed syllable exceptions". These 5 combinations -old,-ild,-ind,-olt, and -ost- don't follow the closed syllable logic of making short vowel sounds. Instead they make long vowel sounds.

  The clue rhymes: Never Eat Shredded Wheat or Never Eat Soggy Waffles got a lot of giggles and inspired other silly creations like Kailee's "Never Eat Slimy Worms" while introducing the directions on the "Compass Rose" as well as basic map skills. We learned about using symbols on maps  in the Key or Legend via a United Streaming Video then practiced these skills in the first pages of a maps packet. In science, we generated a list of words to describe motion that I modeled. Then we took our new"Motion" Science Notebooks and pencils to the front of the building to be "Motion Detectives". One group observed and recorded motion that happened out front of the school with Second grade aide, Mrs. Anastas while the other half watched and recorded motion in the school lobby and in the gym with me. then the groups switched places. As you can see , we have started a new Science Unit.

     Hannah ended the day with a surprise treat of cupcakes. Thanks to her and her mom! On that note, I am heading home to greet little visitors at my door with treats. Your children may remind you to turn your clocks back tomorrow night as we read and illustrated a poem about "Daylight Savings Time" today.