Global Read Aloud Week 3: The Reader

This week was the half-way point of the Global Read Aloud. We have so enjoyed the texts we’ve read so far, and this week’s book was no different. Lauren Castillo has become a new friend to all of Rm. 202 kiddos and we enjoyed interacting with another of her great books: The Reader.

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As we read this beautiful story of a boy, his dog, a cold, snowy day and a good book, we discussed many parts and made many predictions. We talked about who we thought “the reader” was, where we thought they were going, and we even connected a part of the story with the punctuation investigation we started the other day (which OF COURSE I’ll tell you more about later on!).

We got to this page of the book, when the boy heads toward home, and thought that maybe something was missing (sorry, Lauren Castillo!).

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So…we added it. 🙂 And the best part was that Rm. 202 kiddos knew that it needed exclamation points to make it sound exciting, and they also suggested that it be written in all capital letters because that also tells the reader how it should sound. 🙂

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Great, right? And of course, no disrespect to the way it was actually written. Reading lots Elephant and Piggie books makes us see speech bubbles EVERYWHERE!!

After we read and talked, we decided to get artistic and kiddos were invited to paint in response to the story. They were asked to answer one of these two questions: Where is YOUR favorite place to read? or What is YOUR favorite thing to do in the winter? Once their paintings were complete, they chose a paper to matte their piece, and wrote a card to explain their creation. We brainstormed words we might want to use and created a chart to use a resource in our writing. I CANNOT wait to see what these look like altogether on the bulletin board at school, but I had to go ahead and share them individually with you here from home. They sure are pretty!!

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And I know I have said this every week of the GRA so far, but maybe this is the week that we finally join the slow chat about the books we’re reading. Maybe. LOL 🙂

Our First Writing Celebration!

We have been working on getting our Writers’ Workshop set up, as well as learning about and writing Small Moments.

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We used the analogy of a watermelon and its seeds to help kiddos think about a BIG idea and the SMALL parts of that larger story. This picture was really helpful for kids to have a concrete idea of what I was talking about. After I drew my initial picture, writers tried their own watermelons. 🙂

Wednesday was the day we were finally ready to share our finished writing pieces. This was our first for the year, and so we did have to start with a few instructions on how it would go. I also tried something new this time (which, by the way, I SHOULD NOT have done on our first try at a writing celebration…oh well, lessons learned), and had kiddos do writing compliments on their iPads using eBackpack and the MarkIt tool. Writers circulated and read their friend’s stories, leaving kind words about what they noticed and what they liked.

Great job on your first celebration, Rm. 202 writers, and great job on your first stories! Way to start the year as writers! 🙂

Blowing Up Our Word Wall!

Yesterday I was sitting with my friend, Ms. Turken, as we worked on a geometry assessment, figuring out a new schedule and just musing about some first grade topics in general. I had some ideas to throw at her related to my class library, my classroom layout and most importantly the way our Word Wall is being used–or really NOT being used.

We talked about the purpose of a word wall as we understood it, which is to be words that kiddos are accountable to know how to spell. Yeah–it’s full of words that most kids know how to spell and read already. It’s not words that most kids need support with so its use is minimal. That’s where we were in Rm. 202.

I sat down with my class today (in front of the Word Wall, naturally), and asked them what they were thinking. I asked what a Word Wall is for, and I got two decidedly different answers (which was not very surprising, actually). I had one friend tell me it was for sight words that we know, and someone else said, no, it’s for words that we need help with. We talked about how we needed to be clear–and agree upon–what we wanted the wall to be for us. I asked many kiddos if they personally ever use the wall to help them spell. Nope. No. Not really. Yes, but only for names. We agreed that having words like it, is, it, get, and, am, etc., is not helpful. I talked with them about what other kinds of things they might want to have on there, and also went to my word wall word stash to make a few suggestions if they needed help. The word BECAUSE came up (as it has several times in multiple conversations of the last week) as a word that most of us need to reference, and so we agreed it would go up there. Someone suggested color words, then we also talked about number words and other categories. This led to the idea that we could organize the words by type, rather than by alphabet.

I gave them a few minutes to work with a friend (or on their own) to suggest categories or specific words that we might want to put up on our wall. While they worked, I started to take down the letters.

Kids had great ideas for categories of words, like colors, numbers, names (which were already on our Word Wall but that are now in a square together instead of by first letter separately), school words, seasonal words (like Halloween, fall, parade, etc.), and just sight words or other “regular” words that might be tricky.

After school I was able to make a start at putting it back together. It already looks great, and I am SUPER excited with how the kiddos like it and how they begin to use it differently. After all, it is THEIR word wall and should be organized and created in a way that makes sense to THEM. Otherwise it’s just letters that no one pays any attention to.

A fresh start…

Color words and the beginning of “school” words

Number words (yes, I know there’s no eighteen. Somehow I lost it. I’ll fix that. 🙂

Names. I will add girl once it gets printed.

Can’t wait to share more soon! Please tell us what you think! 🙂

Painting, Twister and a Song, Oh My!: Dot Day 2016

I have been a fan of Dot Day for a few years, and tried with my last couple of classes. Last year was the first year I seemed to get it on the blog, though, sharing our dot paintings and writing pieces that graced our hallway all year. They really were amazing. But as I went into this year’s Dot Day, I wanted to see what else there was out there to connect to the day and to the book it’s created from: The Dot by Peter Reynolds.

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Because of my participation in most things Twitter, I found out about some great resources to use for Dot Day activities, and even had a place to share our Dot Day fun! I was geared up for an even better Dot Day than last year, and when the day came, kiddos were as excited as me!

We started the day by reviewing our plans and then, of course, reading the story! And who better to share the story of The Dot than the author himself? Yep! We had Peter Reynolds read to us from this video on YouTube:

After that, I actually reread to Rm. 202 kiddos again, to make sure they “got” the story and so we could discuss what was actually happening and also how this story perfectly connects to our Robinson Mindset:

We used some discussion questions that had been shared with me from my Twitter friend Ms. Hachen, and these really helped us understand Vashti’s problem, how she solved it and then how she made her mark on someone else in the same situation.

Then we enjoyed a song. Two or three times because it was so great. 🙂

And then after we got the point of the day and our minds were focused on dots and making our mark, we got busy actually DOING it!

I had put together a flipchart to give kiddos a visual of their art options:

screenshot-2016-09-17-21-42-36 and basically anything that was round, or could make a dot was fair game. And once they got busy creating, we were AMAZED at what we could do! We made dots and watched them splatter. 🙂 And thanks again to the AMAZING Ms. Mimlitz who was our photographer and took some great action shots of our work!

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The final products are not quite ready to share (since I want to wait until they’re all hanging up and our writing is finished!) but you’ll get the idea as you check out our creative process. 🙂

Later on, it was time to have some more active Dot Day fun…

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This was both Dot Day-related, as well as a great opportunity for us to continue to practice managing our bodies and using self-control as we work together!

After we had made our physical marks, thought about how we were like Vashti and could make a mark on the world, we did some reflecting through writing using this sheet:

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We have done first drafts on these sheets, and will revisit and revise them next week so they can hang along with our paintings. I can’t wait to share them!

We had had a day full of DOT fun, and we had to end it with one more run through of the Dot Day Song. Just because it was so great! And we’ve all been singing it since then. 🙂

And to be honest, this wasn’t the end of the fun. Come back for the second half of our Dot Day extravaganza soon! There’s Skype and another art project to share!

Do You Really Want a Turtle?

By the second day of school, my new Rm. 202 friends were already asking me about why we didn’t have a class pet. What?? Were they serious? They had found out about Mrs. L’s turtle, Javy (because of a sibling we have in 4th grade), and many had seen Ms. Turken’s water turtle, Bradford, who lives next door to us in Rm. 203. And so already my friends were turtle-crazy.

The problem? It was the second day of school, I didn’t have a turtle, nor did I really know anything about them (or had we decided yet as a class if we needed one or could take care of it!). So Ms. Turken and I devised a little plan: her class was going to learn about turtles anyway, because of Bradford and their interest in them, and they could teach us about what we might need to know about what would be the best kind of turtle to have as a pet (I had noticed that Mrs. L’s turtle–who is actually a “cousin” to Bradford–is a box turtle, as opposed to Bradford, who is a water turtle): box or water.

Well, they worked and researched and wondered and wrote and last Friday they were ready to share their information with us. They came over after lunch on our half day to present their research. We were SUPER impressed with how organized and professional they were with their words and how well they used the microphone, stood so we could see them, and were so quiet and listening when it wasn’t their turn. Again a group of first graders was knocking my socks off!

Like I said, Rm. 203 friends were SUPER turtle researchers and taught us a lot. And yes, now our turtle craze is even greater than before. We even found this book to read together to teach us more:

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And luckily, I now also have a connection to a turtle. Updates to follow on whether or not a turtle joins the Rm. 202 family to come….:)

Outside Adventures!

On Tuesday we spent the morning outside. Shortly after our morning announcements, the pledge, Morning Meeting, and a quick Pinkalicious story shared by Rachel and read by Ms. Mimlitz , we headed across the street with our iPads in hand with some important work to do.

Once we get settled under a grove of really big, shady trees, we read a couple of books together (which is part of our regular routine, especially now that we’re keeping track of our books with #classroombookaday), and played a rousing game of Simon Says.

Next, I gave some directions for collecting some important information. Kids had been a bit distracted by all the nature around them anyway, so their next job was to “collect” the most interesting things as pictures on their iPads. After walking a big circle around the area to show kids their limits, I set them loose. They were given about 15 minutes to check out all they could find and WOW was there a lot to look at! There were even some kind horticulturalists working nearby that pointed out some things for us to see!

During this time we had an emergency drill (which was handy since we were in our emergency drill spot anyway), and since it was probably already 90 degrees and we were HOT, we headed back inside shortly thereafter.

But we weren’t finished! The next step was for kiddos to crop their pictures, zooming in on the MOST INTERESTING part of the photo. I wanted them to really think about why they had taken the picture, as well as what the story was about that image.

These were the next directions. And let me tell you (and I’ll elaborate about this later on, too) that it is a little UNBELIEVABLE that kiddos know how to do this already at this point in first grade!

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Kiddos did some great work, and we will build on this as we work together this year.

Check out our Outside Adventure WRITING!! Like I said (and I’m sure I’ll continue saying it!), what these kiddos can do with their devices already is nothing short of amazing!

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Thanks for reading! Please leave us a comment and join the conversation!

Second Grade Writing Warm-Ups: Week of May 9-13, 2016

This week I used our warm-ups as a means to throw in odds and ends, as well as connect to what we were doing in Writing (which is usually where our questions come from). And one of our WWUs even served double-duty by leading to a math conversation. They thought I was pretty clever when I brought that one up. Ok, so I thought it was clever. Maybe they didn’t so much care….LOL Please leave us a comment and let us know your thoughts on our work this week! 🙂

Monday

There’s not much to say about this one except it’s something kiddos need to know, and we’re about to start writing lots of “You’re a great friend because…” messages and it will NOT be ok if everyone says YOUR instead.

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Tuesday

Ava read the book A Chocolate Moose for Dinner to us on Monday, and we heard lots of words that sounded the same, but meant different things. We worked to find some more that we could talk about. We continued to find examples to add to this chart all throughout the week in different texts we encountered.

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Wednesday

We are continuing to work on writing like scientists and exploring plants and pollinators in pretty much all of our day; reading ,writing, and science are all connecting right now in a marvelous way. This warm-up was to help us think of what we’d learned so far, as well as to emphasize the idea that scientists write in a very specific (and different) way depending on what they are studying. You’ll notice we also discussed how many words can be made from the same base. Oh, and I may have spelled some of those green words incorrectly. I apologize if that’s the case.

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Friday

We were WAY over due for a writing celebration for our past fiction unit in Writing, so I had a quick survey for them as their warm-up on Friday. This is the one that turned into a great math conversation about graphs and data collection.

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Second Grade Writing Warm-Ups: Week of April 25-29, 2016

I think I mentioned last week (and probably the week before when we started them), but I am SO happy with how these warm-ups are really giving us a bang for our buck, and helping me get the thinking started BEFORE we sit down for our Writer’s Workshop mini-lesson. It seems like they have more time for writing and I talk less!–or maybe it’s just at a different time, but still…:)

Here are last week’s warm-ups, a little late:

Monday

We are working on publishing now. Can you tell?
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Tuesday

I know, this is totally lame, and didn’t really require them to do much thinking, it was just a quick check-in since they were supposed to be finished publishing their stories and I wanted to see how it was going. Guess I figured that if they had a title, they probably had a story….yeah, not so much. It was also just a great enticement for them to finish because we heard many intriguing titles and want to read them!!

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Wednesday

We are just between two writing units and this was a preview of the next one. It was not the first time I’d asked this question, but it was great to see the additional things they could tell me, and even the domain-specific words they could use to talk about it!

Thursday

Ok, so this is not technically a writing warm-up, but it was timely for us and was something we needed to discuss. You know, sometimes you change the plan. 🙂 And I should mention, they had some great answers and thoughts on what to do next time!

Friday

We have a FABULOUS thing at our school on half-days called Robinson University, which means that my kiddos are not in my room for much of the morning, and so didn’t have time to talk about a writing warm-up. We just did a math warm-up instead. 🙂

Second Grade Writing Warm-Ups: Week of April 18-21, 2016

This was our second week of second grade writing warm ups, and they have been just as successful as they were when I first started them in 5th grade (remind me of this for next year when I forget that again, ok? LOL).

We’re in the drafting/revising/editing part of the writing cycle, so that is reflected in the warm-ups I had them try this week. Check ’em out! We’d love to know what you have to say about them, too, so leave a comment when you’re done! 🙂

Monday

This warm-up goes with the one we did last Friday, as we added details to our fiction with adjectives. And yes, I quickly realized there were WAY TOO MANY WORDS on this chart, when someone’s first response was “Wow–that’s a lot….” Oops. I think they got it, for the most part, though. Since this day we’ve been recognizing them everywhere and talking about how they help the reader. Many have added some to their drafts. I’ll revise for next time. 🙂

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Tuesday

This question is obviously very general, mainly because I knew that our focus in Writers’ Workshop this day would be to finish up (hopefully!) what we’d been working on for the last few days (rather than something new). We had a design challenge planned for pretty much the whole morning and so our time would be cut a little short for writing, as well. It also helped me get a better gauge on where everyone was with their drafts. There are a couple of post-its that say “I haven’t revised yet.” These friends obviously needed more time!

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Wednesday

I tweeted this picture after we did on it, because I was so impressed by the work they had done on it! The endings they chose to post were really thoughtful ones, and then our synthesis of what makes a “good” ending was also great thinking!

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I had them finish this stem “A good ending…” and this is what we decided upon:

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We had a great conversation about how a “good” ending is not any one thing, and that it depends on the story you’re writing, as well as your goals for how you want your reader to respond to your text. Notice the adverb that someone pointed out from our conversation on Monday. 🙂

Thursday

I’m not even sure where I learned that phrase, but long ago I was taught that about the idea of editing being a “courtesy to the reader.” We touched on it at least a little last year in first grade, but I wanted to get their thoughts on it now, as we began editing our pieces for publishing next week. And since I knew they might need help (or at least a reminder) with what courtesy means, I added it to the question. They had great suggestions about how it helps the reader understand your message, as well as making it so they know what to read and how to read it, but we had to really focus our conversation in on HOW to do that. Many 2nd grade writers still talk a good editing game, but don’t always show that knowledge in their actual final drafts. We’ll continue to work on that next week as we finalize our published texts.

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What did you work on as a writer this week? What do you think of our warm-ups? How would you have answered them?

Culture–Final Drafts!

We worked for much of last quarter on culture, based on many versions of Little Red Riding Hood. Here are our final drafts of the books we published about the cultures of the various regions and countries we studied (not all kiddos wanted me to share, by the way–since I know now that I should ask!).