Just as we have done in reading, we will brainstorm the norms and routines of what writing workshop should feel, look and sound like. We will keep track of our hard work on a graph as well. During our writer’s workshop the focus will be adding illustrations to our stories. We will read some great books to help show how authors use pictures to tell parts of their stories. I preempted a little bit this past week when we read Oliver Jeffers and showed how he uses illustrations and no words to help tell his stories. We will read The Wave, and The Pancake Story, both wordless picture books as examples. Some focus will be adding backgrounds (the grass, the sky, the horizon) so people are not just floating in air! I will copy a page of The Wave and they will add their own words as a fun way to put their own thoughts of what they were thinking as we "read" the story. We will share these as a class and see what our classmates came up with! We will also practice with one of our own stories seeing how we can add more to the illustrations to help tell our story. Some books we will read: The Dot Ish The Pencil The Wave The Pancake Story Sky Color Three of these books (The Dot, Ish and Sky Color) are by Peter H. Reynolds who is one of my favorite authors. The books have wonderful meanings (as well as multiple meanings) and our short, well written picture books. One of my favorite is The North Star, which I think is geared more to adults, or young adults, especially with all the changes in our lives. Check it out!
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Next week our nonfiction study will be about Owls! We will make our own owl out of construction paper to go on our packet. We will read many books, watch some videos, look up some facts about owls. There are many different types so we will do a generic study unless they find an owl they really like and we’ll study that one! We will learn to take web notes and make lists. We will also be practicing our sentence structure. They will do more sticky note writing as well much like you saw in their shark packets. It will be a very similar study to Great White sharks. We are going to continue to practice “reading to self” and “reading to someone” as part of our reading workshop. We will start with some great read alouds that will encourage and practice “listening to reading”. We came up with some norms for our types of reading. Reading to self should look, sound and feel like: quiet, being comfortable, looking at the book or pictures and in our own space. Read to someone should look, sound and feel like: whisper reading, sitting EEKK (elbow to elbow, knee to knee), book should be shared (in the middle), in your own space, looking at books or pictures and taking turns. Listening to reading should look, sound and feel like: sitting criss cross applesauce, hands in lap gingersnap, back straight chocolate shake, on my rear root beer, lips zipped cool whipped shhhh (that’s our little get ready to sit on the carpet song :), listening to the book with both our eyes and our ears, quiet. We have practice a lot of serious and silly ways but next week will concentrate on adding minutes to our graphs for the serious way. So far we’ve increased or tied our minutes each day!!! Books we will read: Have I got a Book for you! I Want My Hat Back Olivia Goes to Venice Olivia and the Fairy Princess This is not my hat. We will begin our first nonfiction study on great white sharks (my favorite :) We will being with making our covers by tracing out a great white shark and putting it's various parts together. Then we will being our study by reading a short-fact book. We will record some facts on a web. Each day we will continue to learn new facts, watch videos and look at photographs of Great White Sharks. In our study we will look up the parts of a great white shark and label them on a diagram. After all our reading and fact finding, we will make a list of what great white sharks can do, have and are. From all our new information, we will take "sticky" notes. Most of this will guided note taking. There we will take notes, create a rough draft of sorts and a table of contents. Look for the finished project to go home on Friday! This will be their first writing grade, mainly being able to follow directions, complete their work Next week our continuation of learning respect and how to treat others will continue. We have some more FABULOUS books to help guide these conversations. Along with conversations, we will also do some more activities. I will introduce what being a "peacemaker" and a "peace breaker" mean and how we work on being "peacemakers" here at school, home and other places we may go. I predict some great conversations guided by these books and look forward to hearing their thoughts and feelings. Books we will read: Enemy Pie by Derek Munson Unicorn Thinks He's Pretty Great by Bob Shea Zero by Kathryn Otoshi One by Kathryn Otoshi I'm Here by Peter H. Reynolds Hey, Little Ant by Phill We will begin another author study next week: Oliver Jeffers. He is one of my favorite because, like Mo Willems, he both writes and illustrates his stories; which we will do as writer's in first grade! He also has great stories that draw you into the characters, make you laugh, think and just plain enjoy reading! Which is one of my goals along with being a good reader! We will also gradually (very gradually) begin reader's workshop. We will talk a lot about what reading workshop should look like, feel like and sound like. I will write down those thoughts for us and post in the room so I can refer to them throughout the year. We will practice the "serious" and "silly" way to do reader's workshop. They have a lot of fun with this, especially the "silly" part. Then we will begin to graph how many minutes we can go following our guidelines. Eventually, promise, we will get to 30 + min!! Book in a bag will go home in October. I will have been able to assess your child's literacy and be able to send the appropriate books home with them. Stay tuned! And remember to read nightly!!! Oliver Jeffers books: Up and Down Stuck The Great Paper Caper The Incredible Boy Eating Book The Way Back Home Lost and Found The Heart and the Bottle Next week, we are going to finish Topic 1 Understanding Addition and assess. Based on our post assessment, there may be some review or remedial work. If need be, I may send home some extra practice. If we are ready, we will move on, into Topic 2 Understanding Subtraction. Again, based on where our needs are, we will probably only begin this Topic. There is no homework, but if you want to work on some basic fact practice at home; i.e. writing addition and subtraction sentences, adding or taking apart cubes (or money/blocks-whatever you have). You can also use the language parts and wholes to discuss addition and subtraction. |
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