Wednesday, December 9, 2009

We had a 2 hour delay today! Sasha slept late. So did Dylan A. and Nancy. Emma was playing a Nick Jr. game on the computer. When we got to school, everyone wanted to know if we were having snack. (We didn’t.)

We read a few Robert Munsch stories today. We are practicing reading like storytellers. Good readers sound like they are talking and not reading. Great readers read with expression. Readers who read like storytellers use different voices. Some parts are softer and others are louder. They act out the book and sometimes pretend. The reader’s voice matches the words in the book and the events taking place.

Now that we’ve wrapped up our number sense math unit, we are talking about how numbers go together. Today we made number quilts. We had to make the number 5 using 2 colors. Before we started working, Ms. Stern asked us to think about how we learn best. We had choices about how we were going to work, what our papers looked like, and what type of materials we needed. Some people used color tiles and others didn’t. Some people had open space on their papers and others had boxes. We chose crayons or markers. Before we went to music, Ms. Stern asked us to think about our observations about the lesson:
· The room was quiet. –Jacob
· Everyone was working. –Nancy
· I could think of 6 ways to make 5. –Adam
· People came up with different amounts. –Lauria
· People had different papers. –Stephen

Then we thought about ourselves as math students:
I was paying attention and thinking as hard as I could. –Victoria
In math, you can add up numbers with other numbers. –Sarah
I draw very good. –Anthony D.
I could think of all different ways to make 5. -Adam

In Writer’s Workshop, we continued working on our personal narrative stories. Ms. Stern gave us a few reminders about our writing time:
No drinks or bathroom breaks
Use the materials at your own table
Throw away pens that don’t work anymore. No one else can use a dried out pen either!
Clean up your space when you are done

Everyone got started reviewing their work. We’re going to get ready to edit and fancy up our work again soon for publishing so Ms. Stern asked us to work on stories already in our folders instead of starting new ones. Adam reminded us that “When you’re done, you’ve just begun!” Some people continued to work on their words and others were helping tell their stories through their pictures. At the end of the period Jacob, Stephen, Emma, and Sasha shared their stories.

Speaking of writing…Ms. Stern got a surprise email yesterday! It was from someone she didn’t know and it said:

Dear Ms. Stern,

I just read your classroom blog. Very interesting! I was so happy to learn that you all read Punctuation Takes a Vacation! I hope your class's punctuation is behaving.

Say hello and happy holidays to everyone! (You can see I like exclamation points.)

Robin Pulver
www.robinpulver.com

The author of Punctuation Takes a Vacation emailed us! Can you believe it? Lucky for us, we’re doing LOTS of work these days to make sure that punctuation stays right where it belongs!