Writing Workshop

We are writing personal narratives during writing workshop time. Today, we talked about topic choice and choosing a topic from our hearts. The book "The Best Story" by Eileen Spinelli helped us understand what that meant. Then we did a turn-and-talk as a way of brainstorming topics that are meaningful to each of us. Then, of course, we started writing!

Book Shop Time

We have been working really hard at picking books that are "just right." This means they are not too hard and not too easy. We read the book "Goldie Socks and the Three Libearians" to develop an understanding of what just right really means. The next day we read "Shoes For Me" to develop an understanding of a good fit in a book, meaning are you interested in the book and are you able to understand it. Just like shoes there are a lot of choices of books about a lot to topics.

Our Group Plan

Positional Words

Today we played Simon Says with shapes, using positional words. This is how it worked. We each had six shapes and we had to put the shapes in certain locations around a pencil. Simon was saying things like, "Pick up the shape with 4 sides and put it above the pencil." Then we played another game that involved listening and following the direction. An example is "Put your circle below the crayon." It was fun, and the magical part was we had some students from South Burlington High School to help lead our groups.

3 Ways To Read

Prior to today's lesson we learned about reading a book using the words and by using the pictures. Today was he day that we learned about reading by retelling. To do this you pick a familiar book (No David! By David Shannon was what we used today for our mentor text), and retell the story based on what you remember, can read in the pictures and can read in the words. After a short mini-lesson we were ready to try retelling. We used some of our favorite books - Elephant & Piggie!

Making Shapes

Today's math exploration lead us to an exploration of shapes. We read the book The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns. In this book a dissatisfied triangle visits a shapeshifter to add another angle to his shape. He becomes a quadrilateral, then a pentagon, then a hexagon and so on and so on. After reading we made our own shapes with Popsicle sticks. It was tricky to figure out how to arrange the popsicle sticks to create different shapes. We really had to think about the number of sides and angles. 

Elephant And Piggie Books

We got a book order today with 10 books by author Mo Willems featuring Gerald and Piggie. We use these books a lot, to talk a lot including . . . . concepts about print, punctuatin and reading with expression.