More SDL Fun

We have had some great presentations the past two weeks:

- an eight minute magic show

- a demonstration of how to strengthen your wrist for hockey and other sports

- a presentation on baking including yummy cookies for me (our school doesn't allow treats for the kids) :-(

- a collection of creative student

drawings including emojis and snowflakes.

- a presentation of how to improve your basketball shooting accuracy and how this one student reached her goal of 10/10 shots.

- a video of a student tumbling including editing and music 

http://youtu.be/_G_x9fB5as0

Baking

http://kidblog.org/MrsMilnersClass-2/ac69b0bd-6a17-488e-99b7-a9b47a43a448/end-product-%f0%9f%98/

Tumbling

http://kidblog.org/MrsMilnersClass-2/859394ea-af32-4fbf-a1b4-c8fabf3456d7/how-my-presentation-went/

Baking:

Basketball Shooting Accuracy

Report Cards

I have finished report cards for this term after working on them a little bit all week. It is Sunday night and I haven't blogged. Although report cards take a lot of time to do, they always end up being an opportunity for more reflection on the progress of my students. I am proud of all the work my class is doing this year, especially with their self-directed learning. Their blogs are like a portfolio of their growth. 

This week I am also starting a new informational writing unit with my three writing classes. I will definitely be sharing more about this project in weeks to come. It involves a lot of choice and a lot of preparation on my part.

Sorry this is such a short post, but it's 11:15 at night, and I should be sleeping!

Puzzling

I am delinquent in my posting for two weeks now. Had February vacation, been ridiculously busy getting ready for report cards, and working hard to make up snow days with as many engaging and thorough lessons as I can muster. These are not excuses! Amazing things are happening in my classroom and I should be posting once a week! Shame on me! :-)

This post is about a little inspiration from my mom. She loves puzzles and offered one to me that she had finished. She used to teach and figured my students could maybe do the puzzle during all the indoor recess times we have been having due to snow and extreme temps. 

I placed the pieces out on my small trapezoid table this past Monday and it was an instant hit. The students worked as a team on it, and I had to create a schedule because so many wanted to work on it. I will post a pic of the puzzle when it is finished.

Thanks for the inspiration and puzzle, Mom! You rock!

Text Walk This Way

Between multiple snow days, we are managing to get in some reading workshop time. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I found a fantastic resource for investigating informational text: Just the Facts! Close Reading and Comprehension of Informational Text by Lori Oczkus (Shell Education).

Students brought in informational texts related to their self directed learning projects. We used the Text Walk This Way bookmark for this activity. Students worked together to complete the book mark using one of their texts. Then they did the same with another text. Now that they are familiar with the bookmark, they will get a laminated version to use over and over again. 

The activity is set up with four "text walkers" but it works well with groups of three or pairs. I would not do more than four in a group for this particular activity. Students needed to clarify what some of the sections were asking for, but were then able to take on the task successfully. They figured out that it is really about discussing prior knowledge and text features with their peers and not about writing a lot on the bookmark. The bookmark serves as a guide and record of their discussion. 

As we continue this work, I will post more about our progress. Here's hoping for less snow days in our near future.

"To Be"

This is a post dedicated to the concept of "To Be," from Angela Maiers' amazing book The Passion-Driven Classroom. "To Be" is a way of life, a lens to frame all learning. No matter what the "To Do" you can control the "To Be!"

 

I handed my students the "To Be" words suggested in the book and they composed these pictures and took them enthusiasitically. As we work on projects and skills for the rest of the year, we will refer to the "To Be" words and add to them. The class can't stop looking at their pictures. They love it!

 

Thanks, Angela!

 

Reading Workshop: Informational Text Analysis Begins

This week we start more intense work with informational texts in Reading Workshop. Since October, my students have researched topics that interest them for their self-directed learning projects. This has included two column notes to record main ideas and details, as well as writing blog posts about what they are learning and the process of their research. Some have synthesized their research and presented to the class as well.

Now, in Reading Workshop, we will focus on all elements of nonfiction reading including text features, reader's purpose and author's purpose. This work will include work together hovering over informational texts that they bring in and evaluating them. There are great forms and activities for this work in a book I picked up at Barnes and Noble. Just the Facts! Close Reading and Comprehension of Informational Text by Lori Oczkus (Shell Education) is an amazing resource for this kind of analysis of text.

On our class blog, I wrote a post introducing this work to my class:

http://kidblog.org/MrsMilnersClass-2/837a2724-97ad-49c4-8caa-a2d27142b8d3/informational-texts-purpose-for-reading/

Students are gathering their texts to bring in this week, so that the investigating we do will help them directly with their self-directed projects. I will share more as we go through the process.

Reading Strategies: Chunking

In Writing Workshop, we are waiting for the Social Studies curriculum to get to Westward Expansion to utilize the Lucy Calkins informational writing unit. While we wait, we are working on current events which is allowing us to focus on Common Core standards for reading and writing. Using newsela.com and Time for Kids articles, we are practicing chunking to find main ideas and summarize an article. Eventually, in addition to a summary paragraph, students will also write an opinion paragraph to respond to articles.

I found a fantastic short video that demonstrates chunking by MrDunbar67. This video models chunking so well and is the reason my students are off and running with their current event work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCh6x_sj5VY

With a big focus on revision, students are having fun coming up with the best topic sentence and the best closing sentence. They are getting very creative with it and challenging others to "hook" them. It is great to see them discussing words and writing style with each other.

I will probably post more about this in the coming weeks and will hopefully share some of the students' work as well.