Tuesday, January 26, 2010

This morning was the Reflections Ceremony. The participants were called down to the library at 9:10. Hunter, Sarah, Eesha, and Emma went. Sarah’s mom took attendance when the participants arrived. The winners got called up and got gift certificates for the Scholastic book fairs. There were awards for first, second, and third places plus honorable mention. Everyone who participated got a certificate and a really cool pen with different colored crayon tips. Hunter thought it was awesome getting recognized. Emma felt really happy and excited.

While those kids were at the awards ceremony everyone else in the class was working on spelling. First, we played a sorting game. There were long and short o words. Ms. Stern timed us taking turns and working together. Our class beat last year’s time by almost a minute! Then we tried the same activity with one person sorting all the words. That way ended up being much faster because we didn’t have to take time figuring out who to pass the pointer to or coming up to the board. Dylan A. got the fastest time. He sorted all of the words in 38 seconds! After that, we went on a word hunt for “magic e” words spelled a_e, i_e, and o_e. Some of the kids worked with Ms. Stern on the rug if they had a hard time finding words on their own. Sasha thought the activity wasn’t too easy and wasn’t too hard. Stephen had a hard time finding i_e words. Amanda found lots of a_e words!

During Reader’s Workshop we reviewed how we can be prepared. Before reading, we preview the book by reading the title, take a picture walk, and make predictions. While we read, we mark pages when we use strategies, make connections that help us understand the story, look for funny, sad, surprising, or interesting parts, and we think about the main characters and words that describe their actions. After reading, when we are with our partners, we are responsible for retelling the events in the story by using words like: first, next, then, after that, and finally. Partners are sort of like teachers who check to make sure that readers understand what they read.

We continued working on number combinations. Some children chose to work on their “Mouse in the House problems. Other children began writing number stories. Both include two sentences giving information, one question, and a complete sentence that answers the question.
-Dylan M.’s story went like this: Nancy’s mom made 10 cupcakes. Nancy’s dad made 10 more. How many cupcakes does Nancy have now? Nancy has 20 cupcakes now.
-Adam wrote: My mom gave me 10 Bakugans. I got 5 more because I did good on my report card. How many do I have in all? I have 15 in all.
-Victoria made a story about chalk: My friend got me 3 pieces of chalk. She got me 3 more pieces of chalk. How many does Victoria have? Victoria has 6 pieces of chalk.

In Writer’s Workshop we read a book called Knuffle Bunny. We read, instead of wrote, because we are learning how to be better writers so that our audience (the readers) will be interested in our work and understand it and want to read more. By reading the book, we were able to figure out a little bit about Mo Willems, the author, and inferred what his inspiration might be. We think it’s possible that he has a family and experienced something similar to what Trixie and her family did. We also think that his neighborhood in Brooklyn might have inspired him. Finally, many of us related to how Trixie felt about Knuffle Bunny so maybe he chose a topic that lots of kids would be interested in. Writing for Readers is about writing with an audience in mind.