The Queen of Ten

The Queen of Ten came for a visit this week...we can't believe it is the 70th day of school!

Writing Workshop

At writing workshop we have been using the 5 finger planner to help us write our stories. We use the palm of our hand for the topic, each finger represents one detail and the thumb tells us how we feel. This helps us to think about writing something different on each page.

Holiday Alphabet

It Snowed A Heap

Daily 5

I am sure many of you have heard your child talking about "The Daily 5". The Daily 5 is a way of structuring the reading block so every student is independently engaged in meaningful literacy tasks. These research-based tasks are ones that will have the biggest effect on student reading and writing achievement, as well as help encourage children who love to read and write. Student receive explicit whole group instruction and then are given independent practice time to read and write independently while I provide focused, instruction to individuals and small groups of students.

Our classroom has a Literacy CAFE Menu posted that contains strategies good readers use when reading. In class, we compared our Literacy CAFE menu to a menu at a restaurant. We discussed how the food we order at a restaurant depends on the time of day, how hungry we are, and what we like to eat. This compares to our classroom CAFE menu because as readers we use the strategies we need at the time to help us successfully read and comprehend. CAFE is an acronym that stands for Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanding vocabulary. These become our goals and the strategies we use to be successful with our goals are posted below them. Each child has goals and strategies specific to his/her needs and therefore will get the direct instruction needed to move forward and become a successful reader.

Holiday Alphabet Song Book

Deck the halls with letters and sounds fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. I will post the whole alphabet this weekend!

R..is for Robert

Grace Lin's Visit!!

We had a wonderful time meeting Grace Lin. She gave us lots of information about the stages of publishing a book. We will me making a Voice Thread about her visit tomorrow.

Grace carries around an IDEA book wherever she goes!

This is an example of an illustration for a book.

She shared with us what a book looks like when it is being printed.

Grace read her first published book The Ugly Vegetable Garden.

She taught us how to say some words in Chinese.

Grace told us it is the year of the Rabbit! She made an illustration of a rabbit and put the symbol of peace.

Kite Flying

Origamis

A big thanks to Barbra for coming into to school today and teaching us how to make origamis.

Where did the idea of making origamis come from?? We read the book Lissy's Friends by Grace Lin.

What do you do when you’re the new girl at school? If you’re Lissy, you make a friend. A paper friend. And to Lissy’s surprise, her little origami bird opens his eyes and says hello! So she quickly makes more friends. And soon Lissy has more friends than she can count! But what do you do when your friends have to leave? If you’re Lissy, you make another friend . . . but this time one that stays. Utterly imaginative and charming, Lissy’s Friends is a fresh take on the importance of friendship.

Word Work

We learned a new bingo game called WORDO focusing on heart words. We got letter detective books too.

Winter Songs and Poems

We are making a classroom big book of all the places it could snow on. The song is called It Snowed A Heap.