After Morning Work Time and Morning Meeting today, we had Reader's Workshop. During Reader’s Workshop today our piece of shared reading was the ‘poem’ “Purple People Eaters.” Yes, the same one that you remember your parents playing on a vinyl record. We read it, talked about how it was organized (in verses) and then I had the kids listen to it (if you want to hear it and relive old memories, here’s a website that has it for free). We also began our first Author Study in earnest – Vera B. Williams. After the kids had Independent Reading time, we gathered for our end-of-workshop share, in which the kids all talked about how the books that they read were organized (in pages, chapters, verses, etc.), and also they gave themselves a rating of how they did during reading time (1= ‘uh-oh’ day; 3 = ‘pretty good’ day; 5 = ‘superstar 5’ day).
After reading, we went on to Writer’s Workshop. We began our second writing unit of the year today – it is a personal narrative unit, in which the kids will be writing what we call “small moments.” Today I taught them how authors take a small moment (part of a larger event) and stretch it across pages to make it a book. We looked specifically at a couple of pages from our friend Vera’s (Vera B. Williams, that is) book A Chair for my Mother that uses lovely details and descriptions. The kids went out to try to write their own small moments like Vera did. Once again, great stories coming out of these writers!
After writing, we headed down to the lunchroom and then out to recess. After recess, we went back up to our room for Read Aloud – another chapter of The Wind in the Willows – Mr. Toad makes it back home – or does he? Ask your child all about it! After Read Aloud, it was down the hall for Media with Mrs. Hennen.
When we got back to our room, we had Math Workshop. Today the kids made connections between the number bonds that we have been studying and the ten frames that we have also been using. The pages that they worked on will be coming home tomorrow.
After Math, we moved on to Science Lab. Today we started a new unit (quite a day for new units, I guess) – Pebbles, Sand, and Silt. Mainly, it’s an Earth Science unit, with a focus on geology. We’ll start some cool experiments tomorrow. For today we made a class list of all of the things that we already know about rocks, and started to think about big questions that we would like to answer about rocks.
After all of that, it was time to pack up and head home!
