After Independent Literacy Time and Morning Meeting, we had Reader's Workshop. Today the focus was on the concept of genre - the kids learned that genre means the kind of book that they are reading. We looked at several examples, and made a list of genres that we often see in first grade (ini no particular order), such as adventure, non-fiction, science, funny books, fiction, fairy tales, mystery, poetry, and biography. After the kids had a chance to do both independent and buddy reading, we gathered for the closing share, in which they each shared their favorite book from their bookbag and the genre to which it belongs.
After reading, we moved on to Writer's Workshop. Today was a fun day - the kids learned how to make a simple story into a book. We read a book by Dav Pilkey called The Paperboy. It's a really nice book, and I shared with them how Dav (another new writing mentor and friend) developed his book. We talked about stretching a story across five fingers to establish five pages of a book. The kids each then got a booklet to fill with their great ideas. With even more space to write, the stories are even better!
After writing, it was time to head downstairs for lunch and then back up for indoor recess. After recess, we began a new Read Aloud book - The Wind in the Willows (and old classic). We read one chapter and met Otter, Mole, Water Rat, and Badger.
By the time we finished with the chapter, it was time to head back downstairs for gym with Mr. Hill and Mr. Peterson.
When we got back up to our room, we had finished up our Writer's Workshop (we didn't have enough time to finish all of the writing that the kids wanted to do). Then we began Math Workshop. We had two main goals for the workshop - practice counting by 5s, 10s, and 2s, but using a hundreds chart so that the kids could more visually see what they process of counting by each number actually means, versus learning the words by rote. We also further worked on number bonds, and began the process of relating the number bonds to word stories. The kids worked on white boards and they practiced making number bonds to represent the stories that I read to them (such as one child has 2 apples and her friend has 3 apples - how many apples do they have together). The point, again, to get them to see the conceptual base for adding.
After math, we had only a little bit of time to get ourselves organized and cleaned up to go home!
