Back to work!

I hope that you all enjoyed your extended holiday weekend. I was busily taking care of two little boys while Coach D. visited family in Colorado. Needless to say, I am now ready for the extended holiday weekend that I missed!

Renata and Ari play Name that Number

This week the unit 1 math assessments will be coming home in the yellow take-home folders. I neglected to mention something important at Back to School Night regarding these assessments. Because we use the same math assessments each year, it is important that they are returned to school after you have the chance to review them. They will come home with a sheet attached asking for your signature as well as with a space for any comments or questions you have.  So, even though the folder instructs otherwise, please return the assessments in your child's take-home folder the day after you receive them. I will retrieve them from the folders and keep them on file all year for reference. Thank you for your help with this!

Today we began reading Kate DiCamillo's The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. My very favorite book, Edward Tulane recounts a story of an initially selfish and vain china rabbit who--through a series of adventures--learns to love. I will read the book aloud using the text as a means to model all that we are learning about what good readers do in our reading workshop.  Then, students will use the strategies that are taught when they are reading independently. As I mentioned at Back to School Night, these are all strategies that good readers use made visible to all of us. Whether students are being taught to question, reread for meaning, make connections or visualize, all of these strategies help students engage and interact with a text. This engagement is thinking, and this is reading!


Each day we have a minimum of 40 minutes of independent reading time. During this time we want eyes on print for as much as possible, but students will spend a small amount of time taking notes (on Post-its--our device of choice!) and conferring with other readers. This conferring is a crucial component of the reading workshop. As readers ourselves, we know that an important part of our reading lives is talking to others about what we read. In order to teach students how to talk about books with others, we create reading partnerships. These partnerships are intended to last as students are allowed to really get to know and work well with their partners. Once we begin working in literature circles mid year, we will rely less heavily on the partnerships. For now, I will be encouraging partnerships to read the same book, as talking about texts is made easier when you are talking about the same text! Eventually, as partners become more skilled conversationalists, they will be choosing different books. Today, students learned that one way to begin a conversation is by rewinding and retelling--sharing with a partner the general summary of what you have read. Identifying the main points--and keeping it to the main points--is a tricky skill for young readers to learn. It is a skill we will work on all year.

Our first round of vocabulary words comes straight from Edward Tulane. To begin our round of study, students are asked to complete a vocabulary scale, identifying how well they know each word. This, of course, helps drive home the point that we know words in varying degrees. I stress with students that to select "know it and use it," the word needs to be one they use in conversation. To the left you will find the vocabulary scale students completed today.

After completing the scale, each student selected four words that s/he would like to know very well. While students will be expected through study to gain a general understanding of all fourteen words, each student will be responsible for for learning her/his four focus words extremely well. Research supports that students learn new vocabulary best through repetition, integration and meaningful use. Pinpointing just four words helps insure that the words will truly be learned, rather than temporarily memorized. A great deal of the work we do in class will ask students to focus on these four words. You can identify your student's focus words by noting which four are circled on the vocabulary scale.

In writing, students are working now to show rather than simply tell in their personal narratives. It is difficult to remove the habit of simply listing events when writing our stories, particularly because we are writing what we know, and all of those details are right in our heads. We forget that we need to reveal them to our audience in a way as vivid as they play in our minds. Students will each create multiple drafts and then choose one to publish.

In social studies we have begun our study of Jamestown, the first British colony in the New World. Students will be considering why people from England chose to take the dangerous journey to America, and what happened to them once they arrived. We have started our routine of using study guides to help us organize our learning, answering questions that can be supported with evidence from a text.  Our process involves first taking notes to help us organize our thoughts to the end of answering given questions. Then, students will learn to convert these notes into high-quality written responses. I do a great deal of modeling as we begin this process, but will soon turn the reigns over to the students, allowing them to work with partners as well as independently. This week you will see a section of our first study guide coming home as homework. Students should be able to complete the assignment (that will become very familiar as the year goes on) after having received a great deal of support at school.

Later this week students will be conducting experiments surrounding static electricity. Today we spent time learning about the positive and negative charges of components of the atom, the proton and electron. When we begin our inquiry this week, students will need to consider how these charges are creating some of the results they will be observing in their experiments. I will have more to describe and many pictures to post next Monday!

Have a terrific week. Until next Monday. . . .