Writer's Notebooks

Hi All,

I sent home some information about our class today with those students whose families did not make the open house. Please do not feel pressured to get through all the information, I know I included a lot! Be on the look out for our gymnastics field trip notice as well :)

Today we finally got our Writer's notebooks. We've been doing a lot of talking in the past two weeks in preparation for today. The goal was to make the children aware that each of them have many stories inside of them that they can share - these stories can become part of their writer's notebooks. Their homework is to decorate the covers (backs too, if they wish) - they are to create a collage of pictures of things that are important to them. They need to cover only the yellow sections of their book with none of the yellow showing when they are finished (leave the black binding uncovered). They also need to have their name on the cover so that I can identify who it belongs to. This is due on Wednesday.

We also began our Solar System unit today. We briefly talked about how planets orbit, rotate and revolve around the sun. 

We spent quite a chunk of time preparing for reading. The class is using the IPICK acronym to select books:
I - I Choose  - I pick out my own books!
P - Purpose - Why do I want to read it?
I - Interest - Does this book interest me? 
C - Comprehend - Do I understand it? (Open to a page, read it, ask yourself "Do I understand it?")
K - Know - Do I know all the words (Use the 5 finger rule. Open to a page, if there are more than 5 words that you can't read, the book is not meant for you (yet))

Today we familiarized ourselves with the classroom library and learned about handling the books, the organization of the books and how to re-shelves the books once we are finished with them. We then spent time reviewing how to "read to self". This involves a few things:
- Getting started right away
- Reading the entire time
- Keeping your mouth quiet 
- Keeping your body still
- Staying in one spot
- Treating the books gently

We modeled both correct and incorrect behaviour and will continue to do so next week. The students will also begin to build their reading stamina in order to reach the desired 20-30 minutes of uninterrupted reading. We have also been discussing the purpose of read to self - building fluency (ability to read smoothly, use appropriate phrasing and expression) and to develop reading comprehension (understanding). In the coming weeks, once read to self has been firmly established, their independent reading practice time will allow me to pull students and work in small groups on reading skills that pertain to them. Generally speaking, I will be establishing about 4-5 reading groups which as based on their reading abilities. 

In Math, we have begun our patterning unit. We started of easy - building geometric patterns, reviewing "core" and the names of the different pattern blocks. This week, we've begun to look at growing patterns. Yesterday, we built squares using 1 tile, 4 tiles, 9  tiles, 16 tiles, etc. and then charted them in a T-chart. We related this pattern to "groups of" and multiplication. Today, we built growing triangles and learned another type of growing pattern: 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, etc. 

If you were unable to make the open house and have any questions/concerns, please feel free to contact me. 

Have a great weekend!