Thursday, October 30, 2014

Fall Fun





Something very nice about watching children enjoy the simple pleasure of playing with leaves on a beautiful Fall day.  Hope this weather continues.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Mystery Walkers

Did you hear about our new Mystery Walker game?


Each student has a number.  Every morning, I pick a chip with a number on it to see who our Mystery Walker is going to be but I don't show it to anyone.  Only I know who the Mystery Walker is.  Every time we walk in the hallway, I check to see if the Mystery Walker is walking nicely.  Since no one knows who the Mystery Walker is, everyone has to do their best.  If the Mystery Walker does a good job then at the end of the day I announce who it is and that student gets to take home an award.

Good luck everyone!


Super Readers

Congratulations to our first two Super Readers of the Week.



Andrei wrote about the book The Giving Tree and I got a chance to read it to the class.  We had a great discussion about the book.  We talked about how giving to others is a nice thing to do and it makes you happy.  However, the boy was a little selfish because he took too many things from the tree.  He also left the tree for long periods of time.











Sophie wrote about Dolphin Tale 2.  She shared about her favorite parts of the book and students were very interested in how people saved the dolphin. They asked thoughtful questions about the book.













Keep up the great reading everyone and you will all get a chance to be Super Reader of the Week!

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

We are Authors!!

We had our first Author's Celebration today.  We worked so hard going through the Writing Process in order to publish our stories.  We had to celebrate!

Since the first day of school, we have been learning about what good writers do.  Here are some of the things we learned...

GOOD WRITERS...
-Choose ideas
-Plan the Beginning, Middle, and End of their stories
-Write the best they can
-Write a catchy lead
-Add details
-Use descriptive writing
-Add an ending that wraps up the story
-Revise their story by adding or deleting information
-Edit for Capitalization, Organization, Punctuation and Spelling (COPS)
-Publish their writing





Check out these awesome authors...


Sunday, October 12, 2014

Growing Readers

One of my favorite times of the day is Reader's Workshop.  I love to read and it is my hope that I can instill a love of reading in my students.  Here are some ways that I try to make reading enjoyable in our class...
-Allowing students to choose their own books
-Providing comfy reading spots
-Varying reading activities (independent reading, buddy reading, reading on the computer and at the listening center)

While students engaged in their books, and are practicing reading strategies taught in class, I am meeting with small groups doing Guided Reading and targeted skill instruction.


 Take a look at some of Room 8's wonderful readers