You know when you go on a road trip and you see a billboard that advertises fresh pecans from Georgia at really cheap prices and you love pecan pie, so you get off the highway because the place looks really close by and then you soon discover you've just added three extra hours to an already really long drive to Florida because it wasn't really that close to the highway after all?
Ya. We're not talking about that kind of detour here. Today we're talking about what good teachers do. Good teachers know that sometimes the best plans come at 5:00 in the morning while you're waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. So with that in mind, we're taking a bit of a detour in our writing about Dave (see post from yesterday). I'm sick of winter and I got the impression on Monday that my students were too. Since we're moving toward creative writing in our writer's workshop, I thought to myself, "What would happen if we wrote a thank-you card to winter and then wished it on its way?" How much fun would it be to say thanks to winter for some great memories, but find a polite and friendly way to say: you must go now? So that's what we started today! The boys and girls are working on letter writing, using brackets to provide extra information, along with adding humor to their writing buy telling a season to ease on down the road, so to speak. I can't wait to have my students share these cards with one another. Judging by their enthusiastic pencils this afternoon, I think they're going to be great! Have a look at my sample pictured below, along with my super non-pinterest-worthy instructions in red marker: write two things you liked about this winter and one "off you go now" sentence, also be sure to use lots of brackets to 'whisper' extra information to your reader.
You're going to get to know Dave the chickadee over the next few days! The boys and girls are going to use all the creative writing skills they've developed over the last few weeks to create a descriptive paragraph about Dave! There's not much I can tell you about Dave. You see, other than his name and his chickadee-ness, that's all I know! It's up to the kids to create Dave's story and they're off to a great start!
On Monday, they worked on this graphic organizer. On Tuesday, we'll talk about stellar opening and closing sentences, then I'll conference with each student and off they'll go to write their paragraphs. I can't wait to read these creative writing pieces. Over the course of the year, the kids have gotten to know lots of characters that I have created; now it's their turn!
We had a Math quiz today and it was all about solving problems that involve money. We call this type of problem (pictured below) a "bake shop problem".
I'm not going to count the results of this quiz as I think we would benefit from further practice with this type of multi-step problem. The quiz comes home on Monday and students are asked to do their corrections as practice. They are not required to return it to school.
It poured rain all day Thursday, which meant indoor recess. During lunch recess, a student, let's call him, "Mr. D" wanted to organize a game on the carpet called "Zip, Zap, Zop". It's a really fun game that we played a few times at the start of the year. After the group was assembled, they started the game. It's an elimination game and those kind of games can be hard for some children. So they decided to have several (and I mean several) practice rounds. Then it was time to start the game officially. The squeals of delight that came from this group were, in my opinion, more fun than the game itself. I was minding my own business doing something, but listening to the fun they were having was just the sweetest noise. Finally I decided to get out the camera and share it with you. What you see/hear in the video (special filter applied to protect the face that pops in the screen) is precisely what was happening all recess long. The kids didn't amp it up for the camera in any capacity. Listen to their laughter and how sweet they are to each other as they play this 100%-not-organized/directed/controlled-by-a-grown-up game. I hear our weather is set to take a cold, cold turn, but this little video will certainly warm your heart and put a smile on your face!
