Newsletter: Thursday, September 24

So many smiles and shared laughs this past week. We are really starting to hit a nice stride in the classroom. Check out what we've been up to...

This week we took our work with classification and applied it to a new study of animals. We
are learning how scientists work to make sense of the world by grouping things together. There
are, of course, all sorts of possibilities for these groupings (adult size, color, life span, animals we eat and animals
we don't, etc). However, we all agree to work with the groupings established so we can make sense
of things in the same way. 

The kids chose which animal group they wanted to research and began to search for
the characteristics that define their particular animal group.

This was a great opportunity to learn how to do a Google search on the Chrome Books.

Next year, in 3rd grade, we will have a Chrome Book cart of our own in the classroom.  The plan
this year is to access them every week or two depending on what we are studying.

The kids used their new science journals to record the information they found.

Then they worked to make posters to teach the rest of us about their animal group. Each poster
needed to list the characteristics of  the group and include illustrations and labels
for at least five  animals in this group.

We are now in the process of using the information from our posters to write a song
about animals. This photo shows some "dummy" lyrics I created to teach them
the lyrical pattern (ABCB) and the melody of the song. They are now working
to write each of the verses. I'll be responsible for the chorus. We'll definitely be singing this
at Curriculum Night on October 8th as well as at our Gathering on Friday, October 9th.

In reading we are doing "Reader's Theater" right now.

Reader's Theater is an engagement in which the kids work in groups to read a play script
that has been created from a children's book. 

Some of the books used for our scripts are Frog and Toad, The Three Billy Goats Gruff,
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, and The Twits.

The final step will be to choose a favorite script, practice reading it, rehearse acting it out,
make props, and perform it for the class.

The reason we do Reader's Theater, besides the fact it is a really fun literacy event, is to
put into practice all we've been learning about how reading should sound.

To learn about the sound of reading (sometimes referred to as reading fluency) we studied
different readers as they read stories to us. We listened to an actress (Camryn Manheim), our
instructional assistant (Mrs. Shealy), and a teacher at CFI (Mr. Johnson). Here Mr. Johnson is
matching the mood of his reading to the mood of the story - sad.

For each reader, the kids made a list of the things they noticed
the reader doing that made the story sound really good. In this picture we can see Mr. Johnson is using
a loud voice but at other times he used a quiet voice. He also shifted his voice from high to
low at different points in the story. 

Not sure what was happening at this point in the story but that face is awesome!

At one point he jumped out of his chair and used a booming voice that startled us. What a great
reader he is! 

Here's the poster we have created detailing things we noticed in our readers. We will now
work to use these same techniques in our Reader's Theater performances - as well as
in our daily reading. Reading with greater fluency helps us to better understand what
'we are reading.

Speaking of reading, we used our Reading Logs from last week to create a graphic showing
which strategies we are using the most often when coming to words we don't know. Looks
like breaking these words into parts is our most common strategy right now. Of course, we never
really just use ONE strategy at a time. There are a number of strategies working hand-in-hand
to help us solve unknown words. 

Mr. Foote came in with three of his students to teach us how his class was using a page
at the back of their writing journals to keep an ongoing list of topics they might write
about at some point this year. We appreciated hearing about the cool things happening
in their classroom and even taking some of these ideas to use in our own classroom.

Mr. O'Keefe came in as well to show us how he uses his own writing journal in his
daily life. He keeps a small pad stuffed into his pocket to capture bits of conversations, descriptions
of behaviors, and other things he can use to write about on his blog. Doing this supports
his writing but it also helps him be more aware of the world around him because he's always
on the lookout for writing ideas.

The kids were excited to show off their newly "personalized" writing journals. Thanks for
helping them do this over the weekend!