Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Ms. Stern shared the great finds that she got at the book drive yesterday. Some children said that they went and got some books too. Ms. Stern was thrilled with her box filled with priceless jewels! One of the books that she got was a Biscuit book. We read 2 more stories together. The kids do a fantastic job speaking just like Biscuit! Everyone got with their reading partners and read 1 or 2 Biscuit books together. We shared noticings about the series: Biscuit only says “woof,” Biscuit is always a puppy, lots of people like Biscuit, the books can be silly and fun, and Biscuit is playful. Tomorrow we will get to meet the author, Alyssa Capucilli!

This morning we got to go on a word search. Ms. Stern asked us to go on a hunt through our reading book bags to find words with beginning blends from our spelling list this week. We found words like: tree, trunk, try, fluffy, flew, flowers, flying, flashed, flat, friend, front, frog, friends, snow, sneezed, sniffed, and snorted. Later on, during Reader’s Workshop, we learned our third reading strategy: Good readers think about what makes sense when they get to a word they don’t know!

Victoria lost her very first tooth! She raised her hand and announced that it came out…only she couldn’t find it! Luckily, the tooth was found inside her mouth! Anthony D. was the paramedic. He took her to the nurse. Mrs. Spiro called Ms. Stern in the classroom to report what great students she had and how nicely they behaved while in the busy office. The class earned 2 marbles for their great choices!

Yesterday we began our trial of Rosetta Stone. A few classes at WOS are giving it a try for a few days. Yesterday, we had only just begun when the website froze so we tried again today. We learned a bunch of words in Spanish. We listened, spoke, and matched words and phrases with photographs. People took turns coming up to the Smartboard.

We continued our discussion of “Long Ago.” Ms. Stern asked us what long ago means. How long is long? Here are some of our thoughts about when long ago is:
Anthony-100,000 years ago
Drew-1 century (6,000 years) ago
Amanda-55 years ago
Sarah-150,000 years ago
Stephen-200 years ago
Dylan A.-67 years ago
Nancy-180 years ago
Sasha-190,000 years ago
Dylan M.-40 years ago
Eesha-204 years ago
Arlo-5,063 years ago
Ms. Stern explained that long ago could mean lots of different things and that all of our ideas can be right and that it depends on what events or people we are comparing. Ms. Stern was born long ago to first graders but in comparison to the Pilgrims or even the time of the dinosaurs, she wasn’t born so long ago.

Mrs. Fox gave us rhythm sticks during music. We copied what she did. Then we went around the rug, counter clockwise, making up our own patterns.

During Writer’s Workshop, we continued working on our personal narrative stories. We filled out graphic organizers first. Then we got 5 page packets of writing paper. The first page told “when, who, and where” from our graphic organizers. The next three pages were for each of the “what”s that we came up with. The last page is for our ending. We learned that the ending is a great place to include what we were feeling when our story event took place. Some people finished their first personal narrative story and began new ones. Other people continued writing and sketching.

At the end of the day, Ms. Stern gave out prizes from last week’s spelling dictation. 12 children got the whole entire sentence correct!