Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Last week, we started working on our time capsules. So far, we thought and wrote about a bunch of our favorites: our favorite book, indoor activity, restaurant, song, etc. We also wrote about what we want to be when we grow up. Then we wrote about our lives at 16, 26, 36, 56, 66, 86, 96, and 106. Ms. Stern laughed when she read some of our writing. So far, only 2 children have brought in their time capsules. Lots of children are still working on them at home.

We had our first Golden Bus Award assembly this morning. Mrs. Polansky congratulated us for the good behavior taking place on the buses. 14 buses got the Golden Bus honor. Charlie and Zelda were there too. They did the victory dance to celebrate. Darren, Michael, Sean, Kaitlyn, Zoe, Rebecca, Kevin, Isabella, Mia, Daniel, Gianluca, Sammy, Carly, and Anthony were all on Golden Buses!

During Reader’s Workshop, we reread Mrs. Wishy Washy’s Christmas. Ms. Stern read it yesterday too. Isabella thought she read it with more expression today. We are concentrating on reading with expression during independent reading. We’re also thinking about being prepared for partner time. That means that we’re replaying what happened when we finish reading, marking pages with post-its, and reminding ourselves of the events of the story. We should be able to tell what happened in the beginning, middle, and end of the story after we finish reading.

Today we played a new game in math. We played Bears in a Cave. First, we played on the Smartboard. Ms. Stern hid some bears in a cave and kept some bears out. We had to guess how many were hiding. Some of the kids got a turn. Then, everyone worked with a partner to play together using different numbers. After a while, Ms. Stern asked us to keep the same partner and switch bears and caves.

In music, we practiced playing the song “Typewriter” again today. Mrs. Fox passed out drums. Everyone got a chance to play them. We curved our fingers as if we were holding a ball and pretended to type on them. One of the students in another class asked Mrs. Fox to turn the drum upside down. It worked! In fact, it sounded even more like a typewriter that way! We also got to use scarves while listening to the Nutcracker music. Boys got red and girls got green.

We had 3 choices during Writer’s Workshop today. We could continue writing stories on our unfinished work side, read a story with a partner and get feedback to make it better, or read a story alone and make revisions. The children who worked with partners were allowed to choose the person they worked with today. Most children chose to read and revise with a partner.