We've been busy!!!

We have been busy beavers this week!!! Not only have we been continuing to work hard on our learning, but we also squeezed in 5 keyboarding lessons, a guidance lesson, and a lesson on school beliefs with Mr. Carlson. Whew! Each week our learning, of course, will continue to build and challenge us. To be successful on a daily basis we will not only need to focus on the topics of our lessons, but also on behaviors that will help us to focus, discuss, and internalize our learning goals. One topic that we will be emphasizing is self-monitoring. Am I paying attention and focusing in class? If not, what are some strategies that I can use to get my brain and/or my body back on track?

SNAPSHOTS OF THE WEEK...

Unit 1 in math seems to be kind of all over the place, but the underlying emphasis is on understanding numbers with multiple digits, the value of each digit, and then applying our understanding of those numbers in situations like rounding, estimating, adding, subtracting, and measuring, etc. In the picture below you see students working on adding large numbers. In this activity I had place 8 different problems around the classroom. Students were asked to circulate and choose at least 4 to answer. 

Over the past week we've been working our way way through a book called Porpoises in Peril. Below the students are searching for evidence to explain how the Science Squad discovered the identify of Drake Darkly...a villain who is illegally mining for opals on the ocean floor and disrupting the fish and porpoise populations. As students found evidence in the book they recorded it on their post-it notes.

Keyboarding class...a super duper critically important life skill that we need to learn NOW with proper technique. :)

MRS. CLAREY RECOMMENDS...

New to our class blog this year will be a weekly book feature...books we are reading in class, books I've read and would recommend to my students and their families, etc. Without further ado, here they are!!!

• Book #1: James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl --- One of my all time favorites and one I used to read aloud as a third grade teacher. Ronald Dahl has many fabulous books, such as The BFG, Matilda, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory... Here is his website http://www.roalddahl.com/home/kids
• Book #2...ANYTHING by Seymour Simon. Oh my word I can't tell you how fabulous he is, especially if you like animals. He also has a fabulous website for kids... http://www.seymoursimon.com
• Book #3: The Land of Stories. I read this over the summer and am now reading it to my son, who is a first grader. It was recommended to me by several of my students last year. GREAT read and totally fine to have younger siblings listen in if you read as a family. Best part...it's a series!!! 4 books as of now!!! http://thelandofstories.com

Getting your child to LOVE reading!

Photo credit: Hope King of Elementary Shenanigans 

Reading. One of my favorite topics!!! Why? Reading is the single greatest determining factor in your child's success in school...and in life. Reading is what opens doors to new opportunities, allows us to communicate, escape into another "world," and learn about the world around us. Reading is used in EVERY subject in school as well as in almost every activity in life (try driving around or eating at a restaurant without reading anything). I promise you that this year I will do everything in my power to support your child in not only learning reading strategies, but also to help them LOVE reading. 

So, what are my beliefs about reading?

• To get kids to love reading, you need to let them pick what they read!!!
• Kids need to build reading habits:
• Know how to find books and how/where to find ideas for picking books
• Choose books that are a good fits, both for interest and readability
• Build stamina for reading
• Read THROUGH the books we pick
• Repeat this process over and over in order to build qualities of being a reader that will last beyond 4th grade
• Reading needs to be modeled and supported at school and at home
• Reading needs to be enjoyable, without strings attached. No logging minutes or petty projects. (Do you know any adults who keep track of the number of minutes they read for pleasure?)

What I expect:

• This year I'm challenging my students to read 40 books. Why 40? Because I want them to build reading habits, read often, and read widely...I want them to catch the reading bug!!!
• I will encourage students to read a variety of genres (I have "challenge lines" on the Genre Graph in their Page Turners book). Why? Let me explain using one of my favorite foods. I love  pizza and could totally eat it all the time. Pizza, however, is not great as an exclusive meal choice. It needs to be supplemented with fruit, veggies, milk...you get the idea. As readers we do naturally gravitate to our favorites, but we still need to be able to read for other purposes. When my son was little it was my job to introduce new, unfamiliar foods, and now as a teacher it's my job to introduce new kinds of reading material. 
• Students need to be able to talk about what they are reading. Once we have built our reading stamina and reading habits we will begin writing about our reading in our Page Turners notebooks and discussing together at Book Club Meetings. These were the highlight of our year last year!!! 

Below is a picture of two anchor charts that we're currently using and referring to often as we build stamina for reading and our ability to stay tuned in to what we're reading.

Project Central!

Project #1!

We have finished our study of the five regions of the USA, and...let me tell you...these kids are expects on both the regions as well as identify elements of economy, geography, government, history, and people. They can discuss not only features of our entire country, but explain what makes a region a region. Woohoo!!! Learning goals accomplished!!!

Our final project with this unit will be to choose either a region or topic (i.e.: economy) and write an essay explaining our learning.


Yesterday we each chose our topic and started recording key information and notes on notecards. This morning we worked through the process of reading each of our notes, sorting them into groups of information with a common topic or theme, giving each a category or title, and then arranging topics and subsequent details into one long row to create the structure for our writing. Tomorrow's task will be to begin building our essays using our knowledge of well-structured paragraphs, transitions, etc.

Here we are...working away!!!

Project #2!

Here is an example of how to set up our content for the filmstrip project. The graphic organizer shows one way to explain and sequence key events from the book Because of Winn-Dixie. Under the categories of Beginning, Middle,  and End I summarized the purpose or the main idea of each of these three "sections" of the book, and under these described three main details or events that supported this. You can see in the second sheet peeking out to the left of this is the beginning of my sketches of the filmstrip I would create to accompany the information I chose for my graphic organizer. Tomorrow I will begin distributing the actual film to those students who have completed these steps. 

Steps that you can support:

1. Finish reading the book (if your kiddo hasn't)
2. Analyze the book to determine roles of characters, significant events, theme or overarching issue...
3. Choosing the right type of graphic organizer to help organize information from your book and focus on either a key character, the full storyline, or a significant event or turning point
4. Plan what your filmstrip will look like and what you will want to say to accompany the slides as it's presented

We'll begin presenting these next Friday! Can't wait!!!!!!!

Page Turners Project, March 20

For our Page Turners project this month we are going old school!!! I have a roll of film that I purchased way back in college (I won't say what year that was), and when the librarian at my first school discarded this ancient projector I nabbed it right up. How many of you remember watching filmstrips in elementary school growing up? Bring back a few memories??? :)

Book choice = a good quality chapter book (already selected or read since our last meeting)

Project = create a filmstrip to show in-depth understanding of your story's plot line, main character, or a significant scene / chapter

In class we had a long discussion about how to choose the best option for the book you're reading. For example, Because of Winn-Dixie centered around the character of Opal and how alone she felt due to a recent move, spending years with just her father, feeling abandoned by and missing her mom, and how gaining a dog leads her to create meaningful relationships with people in her new community and opens the door to a more honest relationship with her father. For this book we agreed we should focus on character development...struggles the character faced, events and challenges that affected them, and their personal growth and change throughout the story. Were we to use Inkheart (our current read aloud), focusing on a single character would never work. For this book we agreed immediately that we would need to focus on choosing key / significant events to show the plot line and the development of the story. A third and final option would be to focus on just a single, highly important chapter. Several students are reading LONG, intense books that match best with showing plot vs characters, but do to their length and complexity would be a monstrous undertaking. In these cases, students can choose just one event or chapter that holds significance to the story. It might be a chapter that shows a turning point in the story, a chapter that explains a character's struggle or problem, or the event that they felt was most important. For students choosing the chapter option, their filmstrip should probably begin with a slide or two to introduce their character and give enough background on the problem or storyline that the chapter makes sense to the rest of us. 

The picture below has 3 photos showing graphic organizers that the students will choose from today to help them choose and plan their presentation. The top left picture shows copies of blank filmstrip so that they can preplan their film (so we know how much length each student will need). Students will need to use fine point Sharpies (or another permanent marker) to create their film. I do have a small bin that they can use, but if you have fine point Sharpies at home that your kiddos could bring as we work on creating these that would be great!!! (no need to go purchase, despite what they might try to convince you of) :) 

We will present these next Friday, March 20th!

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

Reading Habits Survey

"Teacher as Learner" is definitely an accurate description of my teaching style. I am constantly reading professional practice books, taking courses, searching online for strategies, resources, programs, projects, etc. to improve my teaching and, ultimately, the learning that takes place in my classroom. This year as a "new teacher" to Fargo, I'm living that to the fullest!

Currently, one of the book study classes that I'm taking is on the text Notice and Note, by Kylene Beers & Robert E. Probst. The book discusses "close reading," which is clearly what we want our students to do. Read closely to fully understand characters, plot development, figurative or non-literal language, etc. The book outlines 6 "Signposts" that all literature has in common. Fabulous, right? What better strategy is there than one that can be applied to every fiction text we pick up!

Earlier in the week I asked students to answer questions about their reading habits, and I thought you might also want to ponder the survey. If you feel so inclined I'd love to have you email me your answers (even just a few questions would be fine), but please don't feel obligated to do so...I know life is busy! As I started this book I also considered these questions, and they are great food for thought...the questions here are the version of the survey that I took (the student survey will be below).

Reading Habits Survey - Adult Version

1. How often do you read each day?
2. Do you usually read printed texts or digital texts? If digital texts, do you use an e-reader?
3. How is reading with an e-reader different from reading printed books?
4. What sort of material do you read online or on an e-reader or mobile device? Is this different from what you choose to read in print?
5. Do you read any blogs or Websites on a regular basis? If your answer is yes, how large a part of your reading life are they?
6. Do you use any social bookmarking sites to communicate with others about what you are reading? How have these sites changed how you think about what you are reading?
7. Have you read anything that includes other types of media (video) as a part of the story?
8. Do you listen to audio books? Do you consider this reading?
9. What do you think are the major challenges of online reading?
10. What are you curious about when it comes to reading today?

Reading Habits Survey - Student (some of these obviously apply more to older students, but it's still interesting to read our kiddos' perspectives)

1. How often do you read each day at school? At home?
2. Do you mostly read books (novels and textbooks)? Do you mostly read on an e-reader such as a Nook, Kindle, or iPad? Mostly on a computer or a smart phone?
3. How is reading with an e-reader different from reading printed books?
4. What sort of material do you read online or on an e-reader or mobile device? Is this different from what you choose to read in print?
5. Do you read any blogs or websites on a regular basis? If your answer is yes, how large a part of your reading life are they?
6. How do you share with others what you are reading about? Through conversations? Comments on Facebook? By texting? By using a site such as Goodreads? Through a blog?
7. When do graphics (pictures, charts, video clips that might be a part of digital texts) help you understand what you are reading? And when are they a distraction?
8. Do you listen to audio books? Do you consider this reading?
9. Do you think that when you are reading something online or on an e-reader you are reading the same way as when you read something in a book?
10. Sometimes you choose what you want to read. Other times you are told what to read. How does choice or the lack of choice make a difference in how you read?