Today, after the usual morning goings-on, we had Reader’s Workshop. Today we started by learning about our newest Author Study subject and Writing Mentor, Vera B. Williams. Ask your child and see if they can remember any facts about her! We also talked about a couple more reading strategies for figuring out tricky words – using pictures clues and looking for a word inside a tricky words (like seeing the words ‘sun’ and ‘glass’ inside ‘sunglasses’). As the kids were off reading independently, they practiced using those strategies. Our end-of-workshop share was each child telling about the strategy that they used the most as they were reading.
After reading, it was time for Writer’s Workshop. Today we looked at one student’s writing who did a really nice job yesterday of organizing his writing of a small moment in several pages – and then all of the kids went off to write their own small moments, stretched across 4 or more pages. At the end, we shared the last thing that each writer added to his/her story today.
After writing, it was time to head down for lunch and out for recess. When we got back up to our classroom, we read some more of The Wind in the Willows – we got so close to the end that it was pretty disappointing to have to stop to go to gym! But stop we did, and went back downstairs for class with Mr. Hill and Mr. Peterson.
When we got back up to the room, we read more of The Wind in the Willows – and finished the book. For those of you who remember the ending, it’s a bit violent, so I did some judicious editing and “re-wording” (okay, I flat-out changed some of it). It was really fun to read a longer chapter book with the kids.
After we finished our book, we moved directly to Science Lab. We had an experiment today that needed a bit more time, so we borrowed it from Math Workshop. Our young scientists were looking at the same set of rocks as yesterday, and trying to ‘discover’ as much as they could, and today we also added in the dimension of making scientific observations, with both words and pictures. Our goal was to be as precise in describing the rocks as possible. We reviewed some good “rock vocabulary” for them to use in the written descriptions, and we also talked about how scientists do “scientific drawings,” which strive to be as accurate as possible. They really took it to heart, with many of them testing colors and mixes of colors on scratch paper to make sure that they had it just right. Really fun science!
After that, it was time to pack up and head home!
