Monday, February 23, 2009

Our new math strategy today was about adding in any order. We can add in any order because the addends are the same. It’s like a shortcut. If we know one math fact, we really know another one! Since 2+5=7, we also know that 5+2=7.

In P.E. we played Rugrat Tag.

During Reader’s Workshop, we started learned that readers ask questions before, during, and after reading. When we’re done, we look back and see if we were able to answer any of them. We practiced by reading Shoes from Grandpa. Many of the questions we asked were answered, or we were able to infer what the answers were by thinking about what we knew and what we learned.

We have a new writing teacher in our class! Her name is Mem Fox and we’re learning about her and her writing to help us get better at our own writing. This new unit is called Authors as Mentors. Mem is from Australia. We looked at her hometown on Google Earth. Adelaide is very far from New York! We think it is a city because we noticed lots of buildings close to one another. First, we looked at lots of her book covers. We noticed that lots have animals on them. Many also show loving relationships. Some people have read some of her stories before. Some people thought that Mem was a man. We found out that she is a woman. Mem wants to tell readers how she feels in her heart when she writes her stories and she wants the reader to feel something. Ms. Stern read us a story called Koala Lou. We think Mem wanted us to understand and feel disappointment, love, pride, nervousness, and sadness. The story was written because Mem felt sibling rivalry as a kid and also because she came in second for a children’s book award when she wrote a story called Possum Magic. We think she wanted us to know how she felt and also how we have shared similar feelings.

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