Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Yesterday was Election Day, the book fair, and Parent-Teacher Conferences. Dylan A. gave his Nona a tour around the school while his mom and dad met with Ms. Stern. Sasha was at the book fair. She helped set it up and was also delivering books. Stephen was coloring in the hall with his brothers and sister in the hall. Ms. Stern was SO lucky. Lots of students were very generous to donate books from her wish list to the class. We even read one, Too Many Toys, by David Shannon today.

Today is Anthony's birthday! He turned 6. We had mini-cupcakes to celebrate.

We learned 2 new poems today: Zack and Jack and Backpack. There were LOTS of ck words in them! We found them together and then practiced at our seats. Everyone had to read all of their poems 3 times once they were done.

During Reader’s Workshop, we learned that good readers carefully study the picture when we get stuck on a word. We practiced together by reading a book called What Will You Pack? We were able to figure out words like bear, map, cap, game, and book. When we were having our private reading time, we marked a page with a post-it and drew an eye with the word that we figured out. That meant that we looked at the picture to figure out the word. Anthony figured out the word “sailboat” by studying the picture.

We went to RIF. Everyone got to choose a book to keep. Someone stamped it so we could write our name inside. Then we went out into the hall to look through our books while everyone else made their selections.

Today we went to art and worked a little on our leaf collages. Adam had to start his because he was absent last time. Arlo traced leaf stencils on his paper. Then he cut them out and placed them in an envelope. They are going to get glued on to cool colored papers next time. The leaves were traced on warm colored papers.

At the very end of art, we had a fire drill. We had to line up outside near the kindergarten classes. Nancy, Stephen, Sasha, Hunter, and lots of other children saw their old teachers. The fire drill took a long time!

Part of our homework this week was to bring in a wrapper from our favorite candy that we got trick-or-treating. We are using them to make a book. Today, we glued our wrappers on the paper and wrote a sentence telling about what kind of candy we like the most. We also drew a picture of ourselves in our Halloween costumes to go along with it.