Friday, September 13, 2013

A Foolish Coyote, Super Readers, and the Potluck Picnic

Our first full week of school sure was a busy one! A few new routines, procedures, and activities debuted. 

On Monday, much like every day, we begin our day with some housekeeping tasks, the Pledge, Breakfast in the Classroom, and our Daily Common Core Reading. Emphasis is placed on using the text for evidence and explaining our thinking using valid reasoning. This week, students read the fable The Foolish Coyote. Here Shea uses the text to describe the coyote using character traits.




Our Grammar lesson this week highlighted the four types of sentences. It's important that students be able to tell the difference between statements, questions, commands, and exclamations. Here, Conor searches for a statement in his independent reading book. 


Topic 1 has mathematicians counting on a number line and finding missing numbers. One suggested strategy is for students to look for "neighbors" on the number line to help them determine what skip counting pattern exists. For example, if the number line progression is 11, 17, J, K, 35, L, students can count on from 11 to 17 to determine that skip counting by 6s is occurring. In turn, L must represent 41 because 35 + 6 = 41. Below, Candace and Billy count on using a number line.


To get to know the students' reading preferences and habits, they completed a Reading Interest Survey. This survey offers me valuable insight about the students' preferred genres and helps me cater our classroom library and new book purchases to their interests. Here, Kelly and Billy work on their surveys.




Monday's Reader's Workshop lesson focused on the positive habits readers engage in while "wide-awake reading." They try tricky words, make connections, visualize, ask questions, use context clues, and determine the author's purpose. Students adorned their Super Reader capes with some of those model reading habits. 







Monday night brought Back-to-School night, and we welcomed many faces to Room 16. It was a pleasure meeting so many moms and dads, showing them our bright and colorful classroom, and the many activities and displays that make our classroom an engaging learning community. Parents got to see the class's Read All About Me posters on display too! Many even learned a few interesting facts about me! 


A brochure was made available that highlighted our class and specialist schedule and the scope of lessons and units in Reader's Workshop and math. What's Grilling? offers additional information about snack, homework expectations, and the simple steps to following our Twitter account and subscribing to our Remind101 texting program.  

 


A huge thank you is owed to families who volunteered to participate in our class Potluck Picnic. We've already received generous donations of post-its and Clorox wipes--two items we can never have too many of!





And that was only Monday!





2 comments:

  1. Wow.. you got so much done ! Thank you for taking the time to post such detailed updates. I love reading about Dereks daily activities and asking him about specific activities and hearing him talk about his day.

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  2. It is my pleasure! I'm glad to hear these posts serve as conversation starters.

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