Page Turners #2

Another successful Page Turners meeting! Thank you so much to the moms and grandma that joined us today to make this time possible!!! Once again we began our time with reading forts, and then moved into our first book share by Mrs. Hill. She shared a book titled Santa Comes to North Dakota, which had many familiar places mentioned and absolutely beautiful pictures.

Next on the agenda...book discussion groups! Thank you to Mrs. Puhl, Mrs. Killilea, Mrs. Sokolofsky, Mrs. VanLith, and Mrs. Sieber for facilitating our groups! Having the opportunity to share and reflect on our reading is definitely a learning experience, and the students so appreciate being able to do this in small groups with a book that they've chosen to read.

Finally, refreshments (thanks to Mrs. Sokolofsky and Mrs. Killilea), board games, and a pom-pom bookmark project. If you would like to make more bookmarks, here is the tutorial... http://www.designmom.com/2012/10/the-perfect-gift-yarn-ball-bookmark/

Next Book Letter due the second week of January. Don't forget to record the books you finish in your handbook!!!

Next book assignment: TWO books of choice by our January meeting! (note: books longer than 245 pages count as 2)

Page Turners Club

Our first meeting was a smashing success!!!

First item on the agenda...build forts and read...

Next, enjoy a very dramatic reading of The Grinch by our own Mr. Carlson...

Then, discussion groups with our wonderful volunteers (thank you to Mrs. Syvertson, Mrs. Sieber, Mrs. Deutsch, Mrs. Killilea, Mrs. Light, and Mr. Carlson)... 

Finally, cookies and cocoa (thanks to Mrs. Hill), a bookmark project, and board games!

Since I was facilitating the bookmark project I completely forgot to take pictures. We made covered buttons with ribbon tails (one to mark our place and one to anchor the bookmark inside our books). The students LOVED them! Many asked where they could get supplies to make more covered buttons for bookmarks and other projects. I've picked up kits at either Modern Textiles or JoAnn Fabrics. If you haven't made them before, I'd recommend going to Modern Textiles (on 7th St just south of Main Ave). The ladies who run the shop are amazing and love to help with instructions, inspiration, or any questions you may have! (Yep, they are my favorite place in Fargo...and I hear a few of my students have been in there too!)

We are SO pumped for our next meeting! Students will be choosing a mystery to read next. If they haven't finished up their historical fiction book, they (of course) should finish that first so that it can be recorded on their list in our Page Turners Handbook. The next meeting will be on Tuesday, December 23rd!

December 1-5

Learning this week has been AWESOME!!! Here are a few snapshots!

READING - One of my absolutely favorite reading "tools" to teach students is from a professional book I read last year called Notice and Note. The foundation of the book is that all fictional stories have "signposts," just like streets have roadsigns. And just like responsible drivers pay attention to those road signs, responsible readers pay attention to signposts. I dare you to ask your child about the significance of each signpost to see if you can find an example of each of these in the books you've read! (i.e.: I'm currently reading The Book Thief,  which begins with three memory moments about Liesel, the main character). Over the coming days and weeks we will go deeper with each of these signposts to learn more about what to watch for (NOTICE), and what we should ponder or question (NOTE). 

We dug into our current issue of National Geographic Explorer.  These magazines have become one of my very favorite resources for teaching informational (non-fiction) text. Our article focused on cheetahs and how these animals survive in the wild. Students were seriously impressed by some of the physical features of these animals. Our task was to read the article, then reread in search of information about where cheetahs live and what they are like in order to take notes, and then research further in our second source, Big Cats by Seymour Simon. Pulling from multiple sources helped us synthesize information to gain a more holistic perspective of these animals. This ability to read, understand, and synthesize information on a topic from multiple sources is a huge skill for students as they mature as readers and researchers.

SPELLING / GRAMMAR - Oh...just worked a little on how to add suffixes to words and some common spelling "rules." Also spent a good chunk of time on prepositions and prepositional phrases, but of course I forgot to snap a picture of that page. Oops!

Catching up!

Oh wow, have we been busy little beavers! Over the past few weeks we have been immersed in many projects, experiments, presentations, and a plethora of other opportunities to apply our learning. We are wrapping things up, finally, so now you should start to see a few pics of finished work! Yeah! This post should bring you back up to speed on everything we've been up to.

Reading - This week we are wrapping up our novel study of Because of Winn-Dixie. During the time we've spend reading the book we've focused on developing a deeper understanding of characters and characteristics of reading / writing realistic fiction. Through this text along with our read alouds Hoot and Ruby Holler we've analyzed plot lines and how authors develop the story and characters effectively to totally draw us in.

Writing - We are in the final phase of drafting our realistic fiction stories in Writing Workshop! This week our anchor lessons are on how to craft an ending that ties into the problem and story arc (aka: plot line) and ties up loose ends from the story. Students have already spent quite a bit of time revising during our drafting, but we will take a final look at how to blend dialogue, action, and description of setting as we finalize our word choice. As this project comes to a close we will model and practice strategies for editing punctuation, spelling, and capitalization, especially with dialogue (which can be tricky).

Spelling - Our weekly spelling skill lessons are going great! Weekly words have been a challenge! :) Beginning this week we incorporated more work with these words and strategies for breaking them down into chunks vs memorizing letter by letter. Wednesday morning we spend some time chunking words, defining them, and making comparisons between the words and roots. It was great, and I think students' confidence with the words improved significantly!!! (Just a note on grading and report cards...students' spelling grades are not based on our weekly quizzes, but more so on using spelling strategies and word knowledge in everyday writing. Our weekly words allow us to work more with studying roots and their meanings, which is both a spelling and a reading skill.)

Math - We made it through our first Engage New York unit! We all agreed that the lessons were great...many activities to keep students involved and hands-on with the concepts we were studying, but they were lengthy and time consuming. The unit centered around everything to do with lines, angles, measuring lines and angles, and using lines and angles to find symmetry and classify triangles and quadrilaterals. As much as we enjoyed it, we are ready to take a break, get back to our Everyday Math, and restarting math workshop! On a teacher side note...Engage NY was a challenge, but it also stimulated some of the most powerful math opportunities for students for these standards that I've seen. WOW, can these kiddos work with angles!

Science - Our Land on Water unit has been a great opportunity to dig into (literally, excuse the pun) the water cycle and the effects water can have on soil. We have observed the effect of rain on bare soil, created our first stream table to observe how water can change course and drastically impact landscape. We will continue to study the components we are working with (humus, clay, sand, and gravel) and add other environmental impacts to our steam tables as we progress through the unit.

Have a fabulous weekend!!!

State Research Presentations

Book Study #2 - Showing Off!!!

Just had to share these...GREAT work by a few of our reading artists!

Page Turners Club meeting dates

There was quite a bit of squealing in our room today when I opened our box of Page Turners Handbooks (myself included)! Everyone is SOOOOOOO excited to read and have our meetings!!! Our weekend "homework" is to start collecting titles that we want to read on the "To Read" pages. For those of you who are interested in facilitating a discussion group and helping with refreshments / projects during meetings, the list of dates follows in this email. You can sign up for all, a few, or one. I will take the first 6 responders for each date. During meetings you will sit with a small group of students and facilitate discussion on the books they've been reading. Depending on what refreshment and craft has been chosen, I may also have you assist with those after our discussion as well. 

Here are our dates!

December 5 (afternoon)

December 23 (morning)

January 23 (afternoon)

February 24 (afternoon)

March 20 (afternoon)

April 24 (afternoon)

May 22 (afternoon) 

Please let me know ASAP if you would like to sign up!

Halloween Party

Happy Halloween!!! Thank you to our wonderful volunteers for assisting this afternoon, and to Jack's mom, Angie, for planning our activities!!!

Making pinecone spiders...

Making edible broomsticks...

Playing Halloween Pictionary...

Content updates...

Wow, have we been working like crazy, and yet it always seems that we just don't ever have enough time to get to everything that we want and need to. Can I keep all your children for an extra hour each day? Just kidding...I don't think they'd go for that...

Here's a quick summary of what we are working on / learning about:

Writing Workshop: We are mid-way through our first unit of study on writing realistic fiction. Most students are about half done with drafting their stories, and our core work each day is focusing on skills such as using the right word for said to convey tone and emotion, using the right action verb to help readers visualize movement, choosing powerful words and creative language to help our stories come to life, and how to use action, dialogue, or describe the setting to write the lead (beginning). Bailey reminded our class today about how they learned last year in third grade to be storytellers, not reporters, as they draft. Great advice!

Spelling: The students have shared that they really like using Spelling City, so we will continue with that plan for our assessing and providing options for practicing weekly words at home (don't forget that students can log in to this website at home to play games to practice weekly words!). Each week when I introduce our new list to the class, we spend time working with the root and the meanings of each word. I love how using these roots and affixes also promote such rich language and vocabulary development. May of our words this week were chosen because of our science and math units, but in our discussion we found many other applications for them...including the context of the Captain America movie. LOL! I have shared with students that this weekly list is not the only source I will base their grades on. The standards call for students to spell and understand roots and affixes, but they also call for students to spell accurately in their writing. This application will bear more weight as we begin looking at progress reports during November.

Reading: We are still working our way through Because of Winn-Dixie and hope to wrap up within the next two weeks. After completing this novel study we will begin implementing our routines for small group reading. 

Math: Our current unit is from Engage New York and has plunged us into the world of geometry and measurement as we work with lines and angles. Students have learned to identify different kinds of angles, use both full and half circle protractors to measure angles, and are currently working on figuring out the measures of unidentified angles using the measures of neighboring angles (I hope that made sense...describing in words vs. showing an example is tough!). We have even been writing equations using variables! These guys are going to be SO smart by the time we're done...I don't remember writing variables until my seventh grade pre-algebra class!!! 

Science: After two units in social studies we have switched over to our Land and Water unit in science. We will complete a variety of experiments to study how land and water affect one another. So far we have created a model of the water cycle and observed how rain affects exposed soil. Can you say washout?!

Fantasy Project: Three weeks ago I had students check out a fantasy book from the library for a book study, and at that time we determined that most of us might need a month instead of two weeks to finish reading. That month will be here next week! As I've shared with the students, we will be creating book trailers for our fantasy books using a website called Animoto. If you have experience with this site and would like to begin working at home please let me know. I will forward a few examples for you to see before you and your student begin!

Book Studies: Your student may or may not have shared that I fell out of love with the book study projects that I was creating and am in the process of developing a new plan. I will be launching a class book club call the Page Turners Club! I am still in the process of working out details, but I do know that we will have a monthly book club meeting, very likely on Fridays or before long weekends. During these meetings I will be looking for volunteers to come in to lead a discussion group and help facilitate a craft or activity. There will, of course, be treats involved. Volunteers are welcome to come for one or all meetings and can be a parent, grandparent, etc. My mom and Mrs. Syvertson have already volunteered. We are all very pumped!!!

Immigrant Collage Presentations

Our first unit in social studies was learning about maps. What is their purpose, and how do we read them? How do we interpret special purpose maps (elevation, rainfall, population, etc)? How do we use a map key and lines of latitude / longitude? We also discussed how to categorize and apply that skill to maps, especially a map of the regions of the United States. We have 5 regions in our country, and each region has unique characteristics. 

Our second unit has focused on the 5 major immigrant groups that have merged together to create the unique and diverse culture that we all experience every day. During this unit we studied where these groups came from, reasons they came here, and how our culture has grown and changed as a result of their presence. We broke into 5 groups, and each group studied one immigrant more in-depth in order to create visuals of the group's contributions, which we used to create a collage. Here are the groups! Notice the additions to the collage behind them as they each added their pieces!

After presenting in a "dress rehearsal" to our classmates, we invited Mrs. Volrath's class down for a true presentation. I could not believe the way our fourth graders stepped up to the challenge. My teacher heart filled with pride as they spoke confidently and thoroughly about their learning. Each group had prepared not only their items and content, but also an introduction of themselves and their immigrant group. 

After finishing, our first grade friends retrieved their book boxes and shared some time reading around our room. What a great opportunity for them to step into a leadership role!

Spelling - the Plan

Our spelling work this year will be "a little of this, and a little of that." What do I mean? Well, the district's primary resource is Sitton Spelling. I LOVE the weekly lesson materials in the program. They are engaging and effective, and I love teaching them as much as the students' love completing the activities. And even though I've sung Rebecca Sitton's praises since my stint teaching in Wisconsin (my district sent me to training WITH Rebecca Sitton), in the last few years I've come to the conclusion that the assessment portion of the program is no longer meeting the needs of our students as it focuses exclusively on high frequency words (words used most often, and these words show up multiple times on assessments), which we can still work on during Writing Workshop. So...you can continue to expect to see our weekly Take-Home Task from this program, but not the weekly Word Test (a paragraph format with missing words throughout).

So what was missing and what are you replacing it with? 
Well, what's missing is morphology and studying Greek and Latin roots. Yes, I know, you probably have no idea what that means, and you might be thinking Mrs. Clarey is starting to travel to the land of language that only teachers understand. WAIT! Let me explain. Morphographs are basically parts of words that hold meaning. Many of us might thinking of them as roots (aka: root words, base words, etc) or affixes (prefixes and suffixes).

Why is this so important?
Well, when we understand what these roots and affixes mean and how to spell them, not only do we become better spellers, but we also improve our reading fluency (we already know many chunks of more complex words and have to spend less time decoding unfamiliar words) and our reading comprehension (when we understand parts of more complex vocabulary we can more easily determine meaning...this will be CRITICAL as students progress into middle and high school). Here's an example from the first time I used morphographs with third graders: "Mrs. Clarey! I can connect -ly to three different things we are studying right now! We are learning how to spell words with -ly in spelling, we are studying adverbs which often end in -ly, and in math we are doing fractions and equalLY dividing wholes. This is so cool!" As you can see, students are able to start recognizing these roots and affixes throughout our day, and as they become more and more familiar with them can apply not only the rules for spelling but also identify and apply their meanings.

What can we expect for words, studying at home, and tests?
I will be selecting weekly lists of words based on different roots and affixes, but also taking into consideration what types of words complement what we are studying across subject areas. Last week and this week's lists both focus on -able and act.

At home, you can practice using any method that is convenient for your family. Verbally spelling (great for quick car rides between activities), writing, using Scrabble tiles, etc. I'm sure Pinterest is full of more great ideas. :) In addition, students can access our www.spellingcity.com page from home and play games or take additional practice tests. Each student's username and password is in the front cover of their planner!

Tests - currently we are taking our pretests and Friday tests on the Spelling City website. This is the first year that I've purchased a Premium Class account and had the option to test this way. I was very open with the students the first week and let them know that we will try taking our quizzes on the computer for a few weeks, then make a decision on whether or not we like this format. In fourth grade we do have direct keyboarding instruction, but we might decide we are not quite comfortable typing our words for quizzes, and that's ok! The premium account also gives us access to additional games as well as activities for vocabulary, so I think we'll find it was worth the investment.

I hope this explains "the what" and "the why" for you. Please feel free to contact me with any questions!

Book Study - Realistic Fiction

Wow, are we digging into reading! I have been so impressed with how much your kiddos just absolutely love to read. I've had regular requests for TWO Read to Self times on many different days. While this is very hard to fit in with our packed schedule, it just warms my heart that my students continue to ask for this. On to the purpose of this post...how to complete our second Book Study project on realistic fiction.

Task #1: Reading Log
Log your reading minutes or the pages you read by day for the next two weeks.

Task #2: Mind Map
Illustrate an in-depth understanding of your character by reflecting their feelings, opinions, fears, etc. through showing thoughts they may have or comments they might make. Think about this character's relationships with other characters in the story and how they respond to or interact with them. Think about frustrations, joys, challenges, or successes. Today we used Hoot to create a class model. We chose Roy since he was the main character, and also discussed the possibility of choosing Mullet Fingers or Beatrice since we know those two fairly well also. We decided that Dana Matherson would  not be a good choice since his character is fairly shallow...he's just a bully and has a very narrow focus.

After our discussion I completed the Task, and here's what our "mind map" for Roy looks like...I considered his relationship with or opinion of Dana Matherson, Beatrice, Mullet Fingers, Officer David Delinko, and his parents. I knew I needed to incorporate each of these people to show all the different angles of Roy's character and how everyone was involved with the owl situation (the main problem). I also modeled how to complete a quick sketch of our character that is still a quality illustration, and chose to illustrate each example of a thought or a comment in a different color (colored pencils, Flair felt tip pens, or fine point Sharpies work well) to make the project easier to read (not necessary or required, but definitely a good option for publishing).

Task #3: Storyline / Plotline

Now that we've really shown who our main character is we can map out the problem they faced, how they chose to deal with it, and how it was resolved. We've had a few discussions about the plotline in Hoot over the last week or so, and initially started with about 4-5 lines that all ended up tying together into one. Initially, our thought was that Roy and Dana (the bully) were one story line, Officer Delinko and his quest solve the pancake house mystery and further his career another, Beatrice and Roy's rocky and confrontational encounters a third, Roy's obsession with learning about Mullet Fingers the fourth, and Curly's issues with the vandal and Chuck E. Muckle the last. As I contemplated how best to illustrate these five "mini plot lines," I realized that each of these was just the author's way of developing everyone in the story who was or would become involved with Mother Paula's Pancake House and the fight to save the owls. The problem at the heart of the story was that the owls would be buried if the site was bulldozed, and the kids had to figure out a way to prevent this from happening. Once I came to this realization, I was able to see how all these other story lines just helped us to understand Roy and the situation that much better. 

Here's a snapshot of our plotline for Hoot. Each student will have some form of "mountain" effect, although some may have a few smaller "peaks" on the way up (Harry Potter books are a great example of this, as there are usually several pretty intense moments along the way). Because my events ended up extending over the right side of my arc and covered the area where I would have described the resolution, I opted to include the problem and resolution above and below the arc.

Happy reading!

Water Festival Recap

Session 1 - learning about rivers...how they move, how they affect the areas around them, how things impact the river, etc.

Session 2 - Taste testing water. Did you know that 0.003% of Earth's water is usable fresh water? That's not a lot! :)

Session 3 - discussing city sewers (routed to water treatment plants) and storm sewers (routed to the river) and how pollution affects the storm sewers and the rivers they drain to

Station 4 - The water Olympics. I'll let the photos tell the story. 

Last, but not least, "Mr. History" (Steve Stark)! I could listen to this guy all day!!!

What a good looking group of kids, don't you think?

Inferring

Today we began working with the strategy of inferencing, or making inferences. Rather than explain what that term means, let me share our conversation...

PREDICTING - We compared the process of making predictions and determining if we were right or wrong to putting together a puzzle. Were we to dump out a puzzle (without seeing the picture on the box), we could examine the pieces for details and clues as to what the final puzzle might look like. As we start to put pieces together, we would continue to revise our predictions based on what we see as the puzzle comes together (just like we would evaluate the predictions we make as we read and change them as we progress through a book). In the end, we would be able to see if our predictions were correct as the picture would be "right there" in front of us.

INFERRING - We compared inferring to examining a piece of art. Just like predicting, we can study the details for clues and come to our own conclusions about its meaning, but unlike predictions we won't get a clear picture of whether or not our inferences were what the author intended.

Now let's talk about how we infer as readers...

...and try making inferences with a photo instead of a story.

 Here are the inferences the students made today...

• I observe two otters. I infer that it's a baby and a mother because one is smaller, the mom seems to be carrying the baby, and she is showing affection.
• I infer the baby can't swim because it's laying on the adult's stomach and its fur is dry and fuzzy.
• I infer they are either in the ocean, a large lake, or a zoo because the water is clear.
• I infer its a partly cloudy day because the water is gray (not sparkly) and we see the otters' shadow.

Making inferences is a challenging skill for students since it requires higher level thinking and analysis. Students must carefully examine details in a text and come to their own conclusions. Many times I've found students who are hesitant to do this because they want to have the "right answer" (and inferences are not explicit). Making inferences also requires students, at times, to reread, carefully examine text, and defend or explain their thinking. 

Credit for photos / author of Picture of the Day - Jen Jones of Hello Literacy

http://www.helloliteracy.blogspot.com/2011/04/making-inferences-about-amazon-river.html

http://www.helloliteracy.blogspot.com/2013/08/observing-describing-inferring-with.html

Geography Challenge

This afternoon we began our first Geography Challenge in Social Studies. Students used the four cardinal directions (NSEW) and lines of latitude / longitude to locate places in the United States. Everyone did extremely well, and a few were even able to enjoy extra minutes reading and relaxing after!

Next week will be CRAZY busy for us! Keyboarding begins Tuesday and will be every afternoon through the following Tuesday. We have a field trip on Thursday morning to the Water Festival at the Hjemkomst in Moorhead, and both Mrs. Sieber and Mr. Carlson will be visiting our classroom for lessons as well. WOW!

Text-based Evidence, 5 Themes of Geography, Book Orders

Currently we are reading the novel Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. The first big focus of our discussions in reading workshop is "What can we tell about a character based on their actions, feelings, and dialogue?" Yesterday and today students have been working in groups to discuss what they have already figured out about Opal and her father, who she calls "the Preacher." Getting used to backing up your answer and explaining your thinking is a big step, and I heard GREAT conversations from around the classroom. One group even grabbed their Interactive Reading Notebook (see the photo on the right) to refer to our list of character traits. 

This year in social studies we will focus on two main topics...regions of the US and North Dakota. Everything we study will tie into these five themes of geography (see pic). Before we begin, however, we need a solid understanding of how to read maps, so this week we jumped into Chapter 2 and have studied map scale, lines of latitude and longitude, map keys (also called "legends"), and cardinal / intermediate directions. 

Last, but not least...ordering from the Scholastic book order. The website to order online is on the front cover of the flyer, right below the heading and our class ordering code. To get into our classroom ordering page, you'll need the code GTTYN.

The Grading Scale

Hello everyone! I hope you had a fabulous weekend! One of our topics this morning was to discuss the grading scale of 1-2-3-4-5. This conversation was created as a direct response to last week's conversation that went something like this...

Mrs. Clarey: "Do you know what the grading scale of 5-4-3-2-1 means?"

Class: "Uh..." (or just a blank stare)

Mrs. Clarey: "Well, we should probably talk about that so that when I start to write numbers on your papers you know what they mean. Don't you think?"

Class: "Yep, that'd probably be good."

So...here is a recap of our conversation today, just in case you are also in the "Uh..." boat. :)

Cue photo:

On this scale students typically begin the school year performing at what is considered a "2." Think of that star above the line as a "slider," which moves on pace with student learning. As we move through the year the goal is to finish at a "4," which means a student has mastered that standard. As I shared with my students, sometimes a student will master certain standards almost right away, while at the same time needing a full year to master others. We all learn at our own pace, and we all need to be challenged at our own level. A "1" would be considered performing below the grade level standard, and a "5" is producing evidence of learning beyond the fourth grade level. Both of these are rare!

Today I used the analogy of riding a bike to help explain...

1. knowing that you can ride a bike to get places faster, but not sure how to use the pedals, steer, or get on properly
2. riding the bike with the help of a parent who is holding onto the bike to keep it steady while you learn to pedal and steer (doing it, but only with instruction, guidance, and support)
3. knowing how to pedal and steer but still wobbly, so a parent is running along side with a hand out or nearby as the biker slowly teeters their way down the sidewalk almost independently (doing it with less support, but still needing reassurance, pointers, and guidance)
4. getting on, riding down the street, stopping, and dismounting all on your own! (doing it all on your own!)
5. becoming a skilled rider capable of rugged mountain terrain, long distances, etc (able to use the skill in ways most people can't)

This grading scale is not new, but as it was introduced only last year I wanted to make sure we are all on the same page. Over the next few weeks you will slowly begin to see these numbers on assignments. Please keep in mind that the number on any given assignment is specific TO that assignment, not necessarily the overall mastery of the standard it's linked to. For example...on Friday I asked students to solve 3 addition problems with multiple digits and regrouping. Several students got all 3 problems correct, which would be considered a "4." However, the standard asks students to "Fluently add and subtract multi-digit whole numbers using the standard algorithm." These 3 problems do not address subtraction, and they were not to the 1,000,000 place value. So the "4" was specific to the assignment and showed mastery there, but would not be enough to move the slider on the progress report immediately to a "4." 

Whew! How'd I do? I hope that this clears and confusion or misconceptions. Please feel free to contact me for further clarification if needed!

TGIF!

Each day we have been working to increase our stamina during our "Read to Self" time. I have just been amazed by this group's desire to read, read longer, and read more often. Love it!

Our focus today in math was on solidifying our grasp of adding large numbers. To create these numbers we passed around two decks of cards. As students dealt between 4-6 cards to create addends (the numbers added together to get the sum, or total), we were also able to practice reading these numbers fluently...something that can become quite challenging as the word "hundred" tends to pop in often!

Happy Friday!

Adding Large Numbers

Today in math we worked on adding large numbers. Adding millions didn't pose a problem, so the students asked for a real challenge...the trillions (dun, dun, dun). They didn't think you'd believe them when they told you, so we decided to pose for a picture. Happy Thursday!

First home "Book Study," I CAN Statements, Rules for Discussion

Happy second week of back to school season! Today I sent home our first at-home assignment (dun, dun, dun...). No worries, though, it should be a snap! These book studies are something that I'm designing and creating as we go, so if there are any that you love or are difficult to complete at home please send me a quick email! I'd love your feedback! 

If you already saw the pamphlet today after school, I only asked students to begin Task 4, which is logging their daily reading minutes. We will chat about the other tasks tomorrow or later this week as time allows. There are two purposes for this first book study. 1 - to better allow me to get to understand each student's reading interests and habits, and 2 - to set the tone for the year and establish a healthy habit of regular reading at home. The project will be due two weeks from Friday (Sept. 19). You will notice toward the end that there aren't enough blanks for every single day between now and the 19th. That's ok! If you want to log below the last line feel free, or just stopping at the bottom line is fine too. If you miss a few days and don't fill every single last one, that's ok! Life happens!!! Just encourage your child to read a little extra another day. I would much prefer honesty here than "padding the numbers." 

Next photo...a few of the learning targets we will focus on first. White are for math, and the first was our focus today. The pink is what we will begin with in reading. 

Last, but not least! Now that we are jumping into our first novel study (Because of Winn-Dixie) and Writer's Workshop we will work with other students in groups or partners DAILY. As part of our CARES rules we created our Rules for Discussion to make sure this time is always positive and productive! 

First week of school...check!

Well, hello! Thank you so much for sharing your children with me this week. They were just as thrilled to be here as I was, and we had quite a ride. Many of our activities focused on building our classroom community together. As you saw on our first post, we began with our classroom rules and establishing routines, and yesterday and today we have continued to focus on those positive qualities while getting ourselves back into the routines of school. 

Yesterday during our Morning Meeting we discussed Mission (a common goal or purpose) and Vision (what inspires us to achieve our goal), and THE STUDENTS wrote out ours. The wisdom that they have at this age is astounding! Here is what they came up with...

...we decided I need to figure out how to create a huge banner with these to hang front and center above our white board.

Today was day 1 of writing workshop and math. I heard a lot of groaning, but not when I told them that we were going to start math...when I told them that we were done with our lesson for the day! LOL!

Last, but not least...here is a little treat for you in two options!

Blog update...new design chosen & installation on the way! Woohoo!!!