Aug
20
2012
Miss Cegielski
During the past two weeks we have been focusing on building our classroom community. One of the ways we do that is through our daily Morning Meeting. Morning Meeting consists of four parts: Greeting, Share, Activity, and Message. The goal of morning meeting is to start our day off in a positive way. Today our greeting was called “What’s the News?” Students ask each other what their news is and then everyone has a chance to share something they did over the weekend. We heard about the State Fair, a Cubs game, playing outside, and so many other exciting activities. It is so great to see the children listening to one another and wanting to get to know their friends better. Our activities are fun songs or games where we can practice teamwork. Our message explains what we will be doing that day for example, today the kids were pumped to learn that we are taking care of the chickens this week!
Friends sitting in our morning meeting circle
Sydney and Donovan greeting each other
Chairo and CJ playing “Double Double This This”
Paiton and Himiko using teamwork to play the game
Feeding the chickens
Saying hello to the chickens
Aug
20
2012
Miss Estridge
This morning, at the beginning of Readers Workshop, I read the book, The Littlest Acorn. It is a beautiful story about an acorn to runs into a tall pine tree, a brightly colored daisy, and a sweet smelling rose. With each encounter, the little acorn notices how different he is from the other plants and wonders what might be special about him. In the end we learn that the Little Acorn grows up into a strong, tall tree.
After reading the book, I sent students out for their independent reading time. After they read independently, all students returned to the rug for share time. Today, Abel shared his reading. He read some of his book, Grumpy Bird. When Abel was done, I asked him what he did to help him read his books today. He said that he looked at the pictures and the words. This lead into a discussion about differences in our reading and our books. All of last week, we talked about how good readers can read books by looking at the pictures. However, today, Abel showed us that good readers can look at the words in their books too.
This week, I am going to begin putting books into your children’s reading bags. Some of the books will be based on your child’s interests. Others will be based on their reading needs. The conversation today was great because it affirmed students that when that happens, some of us will have books with lots of pictures. Some of us will have books with pictures and words, and some of us will have books with lots of words and few to no pictures. All of those things are different, but just like the story about the Little Acorn, we know that different isn’t bad. We’re all different and that ok!
Abel reading Grumpy Bird in the share chair!
Aug
20
2012
Mrs. Clark
We introduced something new into our Math Workshop today. Each friend got a math notebook. We will be using these math notebooks as a part of our problem solving portion of Math Workshop. The notebooks have been in the basket all of last week and the kids were very excited today to finally get to use them! The kids were able to take their notebook and go wherever they wanted in the room to solve their problem. I am looking forward to using notebooks again this year as it is a great way to see each friend’s growth quickly!
William is using the legos to help him in his math notebook.
Townes is working in his math notebook.
Aug
20
2012
Mrs. Argus
Each day at the end of Story Workshop, we have share time. Sometimes, friends are asked to act out their story, sometimes they read from a book they have written in. Friends are usually invited to share if they have done something that our other friends can learn from or they have been working particularly hard on a piece. Today, Ayden and J’Den were invited to share. Each boy took their turn sitting in our rocking chair and reading their story aloud to our friends. After the story, the author can call on two friends to give compliments or suggestions (if the story isn’t finished and the author would like some). We are practicing giving authentic compliments that are specific. Practice giving compliments at home- it feels good!
- J’Den reads his story about the carnival he went to on Friday.
Tags: friendship, story workshop, writing
Aug
17
2012
Mrs. Bucher
Today was an exciting day! First we learned that we will have 1 new friend join our class on Monday (now it is up to 3 new friends) so we were talking about how supportive and welcoming we will be to the new friend(s) we will see on Monday. The children were being so sweet and saying how they were going to play with the new friend, Sarah!
Then we were outside during recess and Renna ran up to me to tell me that there was a butterfly that had been hurt and was now on the ground. I went over there and Zakeyah quickly asked if we could make it a home to make it stronger! A crowd began to form around this butterfly,and I quickly saw this as an opportunity to put into action what we had talked about this morning-being supportive and nurturing to this new pet of ours.
We took it in and every child had so many ideas about how we could nurture this butterfly and fix it! A fabulous conversation took place where we talked about what kind of home we were going to give it-examples where building it out of wood,borrowing a mesh butterfly home,volunteering family members to build it.
After we talked about the home, I asked our friends why we were doing it, and Maggie said, “to make it feel good.” Heaven then asked, “What is its name?” Again, a flurry of activity began as children were naming many names like Fluffy, Lei Lei, Ashu, Leah, Speeder, Crystal and more. At the end of the day we all took a vote and the name of our butterfly is….CRYSTAL SPEEDER!!
This experience is project work at its best..something provokes an interest, passion, emotional connection where it drives the children to think deeply, collaborate thoughtfully,and discuss intensely!
