The most powerful tool in the world!

Yesterday in reader's workshop, we embarked on a new journey as readers. We've practiced how to read fluently in our minds, how to read with intonation and expression, and how to read as a writer, looking for "special language" like comparisons, onomatopoeia, and figurative language. We are moving into reading bigger and longer books, such as chapter books, but realizing that sometimes we forget about the storyline when we read books like that. So, we got the most powerful tool in the world....a PARTNER! 😀

Over the next few lessons in readers workshop, we will be learning how a partner an be so valuable when we are reading a chapter book. Students were assigned a partner on the same or similar reading level and they got to "shop" for the same chapter book. They had to decide where they wanted to stop and once they both reach that stopping point, they will get to discuss what they've read. During the reading we encourage them to jot down thoughts with evidence from the text and questions they have, so that their discussion with their partners about the book will be very meaningful. Friends were encouraged to take their chapter book home this weekend to get to their stopping point and jot down some thoughts. Check in with your reader and ask them what they're thinking about what they've read so far. Pretend to be their partner and see what kind of discussion they will have. Friends, did you have a big aha while reading?? Leave us a comment and tell us and we can't wait to hear you in action with your partner on Monday. 😃📖

Writers are scientists? Scientists are writers?

The I'm baaaaaaccck! And super happy to be 😊 we are diving into new units in every core subject, but my absolute favorite new unit, is our new writing unit. We are learning how to write like scientists and write lab reports. That's right....scientists are writers and quite organized writers, at that. 

Our first lesson was more of a guided inquiry into how scientists write. We came up with a question we wanted to test and we conducted a detailed experiment, while at the same time being sure to document every step, every material we needed, and what each step looked like. Our testable question was: 

will the little car go farther off the ramp on carpet or bare floor? 

It was SUPER fun and SUPER informational! We learned a lot about the structure of a lab report and lots of science about force and motion. Ask your child what they learned! 😃🚗📝

Sing, sing, sing 🎤

This week in Reader's Workshop we've been spending time with books we are familiar with and books that are new to us to study fluent reading. We've learned strategies to make our reading sound like talking, how to recognize the tone and mood to read with intonation, and how to look for words or phrases that give more detail to how we should be reading. 

Something we've been doing since the beginning of the year is a morning fluency song. After we complete our morning work we sing our fluency song to help us practice all the things listed above. Take a look at us doing it! Our only rule is, eyes on the text and read the lyrics. It's super fun!!!! 

It's a three ring circus for sure!

We've been working hard on our rituals and routines and even harder diving head first into our curriculum.
In ring 1 we are juggling literacy. We are learning how readers "grow like beanstalks" by doing things like discovering how the book wants to be read, taking grown up sneak peeks into our book to  gett our brains' thoughts on fire before we even read, and building our reading stamina by reading more and more. We are currently reading for 25 minutes during independent reading.
We are also just getting started in our Narrative writing unit, which builds on the Narrative writing unit from first grade.

In ring 2, science is in full swing on the flying trapeze. We are establishing the routine of using our science notebook daily. This will become our most important science tool this year, as we will house definitions, labs, and reflections here. We just completed a review on 5 senses using a coconut. We discussed the importance of elaborating our descriptions and observations so that our fellow scientists can understand our findings. Ask your little scientist to describe the coconut for you, especially its taste!

In the center ring, we are taming the new Duval Math curriculum. It seems dangerous with its many daily components (fluency/skills, application word problem, concept development, student debriefing, and an exit ticket), but our little ring masters seem to be cracking the whip. We will continue to tame "making a 10 to add within 20" as this will be a very important skill we use to help us solve more difficult problems. For example, 9 + 5. We want students to make a 10, which they can easily do to the 9. We want them to create a number bond for 5, showing that 5 can be broken into 2 parts, particularly 1 + 4, so that the new equation becomes 9+1+4=10+4. Many parents argue that this is creating more steps for their child to do in the problem, and while it may SEEM that way, it is not, as this conceptual way of doing math is creating a more complex and efficient problem solver to prepare them for mental math and harder problems, like 48 + 24. By making 10, they could solve for 40+20+10 to get 70+2, which equals 72, all without pencil and paper. Here's what it should be looking like right now:

We continue to enjoy each and every day in the 3 ring circus....what will we tame next??

Day 2 of our amazing time under the big top was a huge success! We got through all of our core subjects today and even had time for a fun craft. We are working really well on getting to know each other and our classroom expectations and routines. You will notice that our friends came home with a beautiful blue T-shirt, gifted to us from the PTA. We plan on wearing these shirts for Spirit day EVERY Wednesday, as well as, on field trips. Please write your child's name on the inside collar with permanent marker, just in case. :) We look forward to showing the school and PTA our spirit on Wednesdays.

We had such an amazing first day under the big top! We spent the day getting to know each other, learning about our classroom expectations, and even getting to some reading and math. Ask your little clown about our WOW assembly this morning... It was quite spectacular! We got to see a Russian dog circus perform anything from somersaults, to walking on front 2 legs, to jumping off a high platform. It certainly was a wonderful way to welcome us all to the Big Top! We are looking forward to many more adventure with our amazing classroom family.
           -Mrs. Lyons & Mrs. Nowicki