I've been encouraging the Student of the Day to bring in a little something to present to the class at 2:00 pm. The kids are loving it and it's really sweet how they'll ask the SOTD in the morning, "Did you bring anything for your 2:00 prezzi?"
We go alphabetically by first name with Student of the Day and we're back at the top of the list on Monday.
The Student of the Day is responsible for all of the classroom jobs such as attendance, Prayer leader, Morning Message reporter, etc. It's also great way for me to be sure each child has their turn at all the classroom jobs because for one day every few weeks, they own it!
Today's 2:00 presentation featured Tristan's alligator head from Florida. While it was being passed around, I heard some of the funniest comments:
"You can start it on the other side of the classroom so I can think about whether or not I want to hold it. Plus, I think I'm allergic."
"I'll just touch it with my pointy finger."
"Oh look, he has a cavity!"
"The eyes are looking at me."
In Math today, we took a poll. I asked the boys and girls to vote for their favourite type of chip. One of the options was "other" and I explained to the kids why we must always offer that when creating a poll where there are an infinite number of choices. This was one of the focuses of my lesson today.
Before we tallied the votes, I had the following conversation:
Me: Which chip do you all think will be most popular?
Kid A: Doritos
Kid B: Salt and Vinegar
Me: Really? But when you eat Salt and Vinegar, your mouth gets all sore from the vinegar!
Kid B: THAT'S THE BEST PART!!!
An RRWE is a reading-response with evidence question.
Students are learning that when they write about their reading, in most cases, they'll need to provide evidence from the text to support their ideas.
This will also assist the boys and girls in Math when they are asked to "explain your thinking".
Asking students to provide evidence from the text teaches them to think critically about what they've read and to assess that information based on whether or not it suits their needs. It also allows children to use what they already know about a subject and choose information from the text they deem appropriate to help support their opinion or idea. This all helps students to prepare for later grades and assignments where the evidence gathering process can be the biggest component of their assignment.
Not only does this process of responding to RRWEs help children to think more deeply about a text, it will assist them when it comes time for them to write their own stories and reports.
At this grade level, all RRWEs begin the same way by stating the purpose for writing: Today I'm going to tell you____________. From there, students move on to providing evidence for their ideas or opinion. They cite the text by writing: I know this because in the text it says ____________.
At this point, students provident the necessary evidence and then conclude their paragraph with a closing statement: Now you know more about ____________.
The next step in this type of writing is for the student to include their own additional information. We call this "adding a plus". A plus is any relevant prior knowledge the student might have about the subject. I'll post later on about RRWEPs or reading-response with evidence-plus questions.
You can read more about plusses here, in a post from last week.
What's a plus?
We're just about finished our procedural writing for how to get dressed for winter play and I couldn't be more pleased!
The boys and girls have really made an effort to use the feedback from their Mrs. Claus paragraph AND add plusses to their work. I had suggested on Monday that the kids might like to add some humour to their writing and they haven't disappointed!
I can't wait to send them home for you to read!
As students complete their work, they bring their little booklets over to me and we have a mini-conference. I read the paragraph aloud and together we talk about strengths and next steps.
One area we're going to focus on as a class is around punctuation. The kids have the whole "period at the end of a sentence rule" down pat. Where we need to focus on is a new punctuation pal: the comma. Because the kids are producing more sophisticated writing, with lots of compound sentences, I want to teach them how they can use the comma to communicate more effectively. They'll learn that the comma is more than just the guy that goes between a list of things.
It's really exciting to watch their skills develop and grow because that helps to drive my instruction. For the next few days, (see what I did there? I used a comma!)the focus will be on the comma, but who knows where we'll be after that!
Congratulations to all the boys and girls on a job well done!
We have some new photos to share!
These are from our Fun-Friday on January 9, 2015. As you'll see, this activity was a huge success!
