A Look Back At Our Week

In Social Studies we listened to the story Mapping Penny's World and learned more about map skills.

Throughout the week students worked with a buddy to create a map of the classroom including a map key.

In Reader's Workshop I was so excited to begin modeling and teaching how to write an open-ended reading response.  

To start, the day after reading aloud Stellaluna, I gave each student the following open-ended question to tape into their reading journals.  

Since students will need to restate the question as their opening sentence we cut apart the sentence strips to model how to move words around and remove the question words.  

As a class we continuously referred to the Writing a Reading Response anchor chart steps to help us know what to include next. 

Since we worked on this response together, the students were also writing this response in the notebook.  Afterward they drew a picture to match the response.

Each week students will be completing about 2 responses in their notebooks.  I love the immediate feedback I can provide by jotting notes in their notebooks.  It also allows me to better plan writing minilessons that I notice there is a need for such as writing complete sentences, including commas when listing three or more ideas, and capitalizing proper nouns. Any words that I know a student should be able to spell, is a word wall word, or I cannot figure out the word I circle it.  It is then the student's job to fix the error OR try harder to apply word study knowledge. ;)

In Reader's Workshop, students have also been updating a reading log they keep in their binders each time they FINISH a book. 

Finally, students should be able to compare and contrast different versions of the same story.  This week I read aloud a different Three Little Pigs story each day.  The class was then responsible for filling out a story map (characters, setting, problem, solution) after each story.  

On Friday they worked in small groups to complete a Venn Diagram.  Later that day they had to complete a reading response on which version was their favorite and WHY. 

In math we began Unit 4.  We are continuing to work in small groups and traveling to each station: work with the teacher, independent pages, and a game or some other activity. 

In Word Study we had fun practicing our sorts by completing a Speed Sort.  While listening to fast paced music the class completed three sorts. After each round students looked at the timer on the Smart Board jotted down their time on a post-it. Their goal was to beat their OWN time each round.  

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend!