Friday, September 18, 2009

We had a small class today! 5 children were absent. Hopefully, everyone who is sick will rest up and be back to school on Monday.

Charlie Caps, Zelda, and Mrs. O’Donnell came to visit and put on a puppet show for us. Dylan A. thinks that they came to help us learn to be kind and caring. Ms. Stern helped the visitors by reading a BIG book all about being a good friend. We earned 4 marbles in our first day!

Today we took our first spelling practice test. Nancy thought it was easy. Some people thought it was hard to figure out which way the letters go…especially the b’s and d’s! Ms. Stern reminded us to look above the Smartboard at the alphabet chart to check and make sure. She also reminded us to use lowercase letters. The bonus word was “gym.” Lots of children wrote all of the words correctly but many forgot to start their sentences with uppercase letters and to end them with a period. Luckily, most people corrected their work before handing in their papers.

We had our second fire drill this morning. Stephen thought it took forever! We had to wait a long time outside because the alarm wasn’t going off. Finally, we were able to return to the classroom and get back to work.

We continued getting to know each other by getting to know Anthony D. We have 8 more children to go and then we will have learned about everyone in our class.

Ms. Stern read us a story called I Don’t Like to Read! In the story, Henry didn’t like reading at first because it was hard for him. After he practiced for a while, Henry was able to read! Sasha remembered that one of the illustrations was of the book I Like to Read! because it is written and illustrated by the same author.

During Reader’s Workshop, we made a chart to help us not to interrupt and to use EVERY SECOND to read. The chart had different problems that might happen and the solutions that we came up with. When it was time to read, some of those problems happened. Some children worked to solve them and others needed some reminders.

In Art, everyone worked on their “masterpiece” that will be on display for the art show in October. Some people painted, others used Q-tips, and some people used oil pastels to make self-portraits or movement pictures. Mrs. Piteo was very proud and gave us a compliment about our behavior!

We got our writing folders during Writer’s Workshop. One side has a green sticker and the other side has a red one. The red side is for stories that we have finished. The green side is for pieces that we are still working on. Today we continued to focus on adding on to our pieces. We know that “When you’re done, you’ve just begun.” That means that once we think we are done, we need to go back and see if we can add words or pictures to tell more. Then we can begin a new piece of writing.

Lots of our invisible buckets have been filling up this week. Here are some examples of bucket-filling acts that make our days better:

*Stephen let me have a book during Reader's Workshop. -Sarah
*Mrs. Piteo said my self portrait looked good. -Drew
*Eesha sat next to me at lunch. -Dylan M.
*Adam got me the paint. -Anthony
*Everybody liked my picture a lot. -Anthony D.
*Eesha and Nancy helped me when I dropped the books. -Dylan

Have a great weekend!