Monday!

I love MONDAYS...after a weekend of no littles it feels wonderful to be back in the classroom with their excited selves! They truly make my heart hAPpY!! Now...with that being said...I will be out this Friday and next Monday! So, you can only imagine how happy Tuesday is going to make me! {LOL}

Some new things happening in our classroom this week.
Today we had our VERY FIRST "First in Show"!  Annnnnddddddd HERE SHE IS!!!

We are looking forward to getting to know more about our First in Show this week!

Writing this week is focused on complete sentences with correct ending punctuation!

 We used our circle map for a little brainstorming! Rachel got to choose what we would be brainstorming today! CHEERLEADING {great choice} because I immediately heard some "grumblings", "I don't like cheerleading, I don't know ANYTHING about cheerleading..."  Then I reminded the littles about a little thing called SCHEMA and whatever our schema is during brainstorming is okay! We did an amazing job!  At one point one of the boys said, "they dance" and we had a "little" cheerleader start to correct him! WHAT a great teaching moment. Brainstorming is for putting ALL of our ideas (schema) down!

 Then we used the circle map to create a tree map. (This map allows us to concretely show where we END one idea and START another! Today, we pointed to the map as we read our sentences.  Tomorrow we will take it off the map and write it in a more formal/traditional way.

We also talked about our writing process.  What EXACTLY should we be doing during Writer's Workshop.   That revise box got some GROANS (I cannot lie)! That is going to take some work realizing that we have to go back and check for how to make our piece BETTER! We have a tendency to think we are PERFECT and when we do something it is PERFECT as well! hmmmm welllll not so much! It's in that revise section where we will peer conference as well as conference with the teacher. At this point we are looking for complete sentences and appropriate kid mixed with traditional spelling!


Not my best photography today. Lot's going on and not enough white board space!  We introduced our first comprehension strategy. Retelling.
Why do GOOD readers retell?
After a reader finishes reading a book they think about important characters, events and the author's message.  They think about who were the most important characters in the book, what happened first, next, then and last. They also think about the problem and solution.

Today we used a retelling rope to help us remember all the parts as we retold an old favorite by Joy Cowley!  Much more retelling to come this year!

In math we WROTE on our DESKS...yes...I heard lots of "does she really want us to write on our desk???"  That's where we did our math practice today!  We practiced drawing a number 0-40 using rods and units and writing the number in expanded form! And of COURSE...I just looked back at the videos and none of them are clear today! BOOOO...I'll try again tomorrow!

Have a wonderful Monday evening!