Thursday, March 19th

Hello All!

Today in class I read a book called "The Story of the Milky Way, A Cherokee Tale" by Joseph Bruchac, for the nonfiction read aloud. As a class we talked about different lessons that could be based off this book. Some of the ideas we came up with were, having students write their own folklore, acting out the story as a class, and having students research other folklores. After the read aloud we got into our writing groups to silently read over the "Written Language Analysis" assignment. When we were finished in small groups, we gathered as a class to talk about similarities we saw across the different samples. Some of these similarities were that students have a lot of trouble with homophones, students did well with indenting, capitalizing letters and using inventive spelling. No homework over break!!

Have a great Spring Break!

St. Patty's Day!!!

Today in class we discussed our bajillion ways article responses. There were a variety of different responses. I handed out a writing sample from a 2nd grade student. The student did a great job of sounding out words, using adjectives, and capitalizing names. She could work on some spelling, making sentences shorter and quotation marks. She was what I would consider average for a 2nd grader. At the writing sample Betsey and Aubry gave a lesson about adjectives. The class received a letter from a leprechaun and we were given special powder. We got to guess what it was and it turns out it was pudding. After making the pudding we described the changes that occurred after we made it. Then we got to eat some! This was a fun St. Patty's day lesson! A reminder we have out written analysis due on Thursday! Have a great day everyone!

3-12-09

3-12-09
Today in class, we were given a new assignment called Written Language Analysis. This assignment is due March 19th. Get a children's writing sample and use it to do the written assignment. Next, I read aloud a book called King Bidgood's in the bathtub By Audery Wood. I mentioned that this book was good to use for sentence fluency. Then, Caitie and Devin presented a lesson on details and descriptive words. We all sat in a circle and guessed what the first few pages of the book "A Medieval Feast" had said by paying attention to detail and looking at the pictures. Then, we were shown a picture of a carnival scene and asked to describe what we think is going on using details. We were then asked to share and given a Self-Evaluation sheet that we completed in parallel to our work. Finally, we turned in our writing evaluations and class was dismissed.

3-10-09

Today in class, we started with discussing our writing portfolios. We decided that you can either have a separate binder or a section in your idea notebook. For next Thursday, you need to write a reflection including how it is organized, what you have learned, and your views on Juanita's teaching. Next, I presented a poetry writing sample from a second grade boy. We discussed his strengths and how we can help him grow. We then evaluated his work using a 4 point holistic scoring guide. Then, Kelsey and Jenna G. presented a lesson on word choice. We created mad libs and made sentences by rearranging words on note cards.

Organizational Books

Hey guys!

Here is a google "library" that showcases some of the books Marissa and I found! Enjoy!

Annie & Marissa


http://www.google.com/books?uid=13972835705784990967&rview=1

electronic books

This is our groups electronic presentation. It's a website.

missouri.edu/~datwvf

Thursday, March 5 class

On Thursday, Kelly read the book The Keeping Quilt, by Patricia Polacco. This book takes readers through each generation of the writers' family through their use of a family quilt. The words are simple, yet personal, and the pictures are entirely in brown except for the quilt in each picture. Although this book may not seem like a typical "informational" text, it is a nonfictional story and includes culture and history.

Kelly also passed around the Young Explorers book, Human Body. Although it is not a book that Kelly chose to read aloud to the group, it would be a great book to have as a resource, and children would have a blast looking through the pop-up pages.

After the read-aloud, we traveled to the Reflector to work on creating a way to present our groups' 6-traits books by utilizing technology.

Our homework is to finish our 6-traits books' technology, and remember that our next article response is also due on Tuesday!

Idea Trait: Wordle by Devin, Betsy, & Jenna

Rosa by Nikki Giovanni (Devin Erdal)
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/615416/Rosa

SouperChicken by Mary Jane Auch (Betsy Richmond)
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/615398/SouperChicken

Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (Jenna Guarino)
http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/615425/Where_The_Wild_Things_Are

Voice 6+1 Trait

Hello everyone! So we now have a blog for the voice 6+1 Trait, it's my old blog. So the address is caitiegraham.blogspot.com.

Sentence Fluency

Testing Miss Malarkey by: Judy Finchler
She Did It! by: Jennifer A. Ericsson
Move Over Rover! by: Karen Beaumont
King Bidgood's In the Bathtub by: Audrey Wood
The Little Boat by: Kathy Henderson
Can I Bring My Pterodactyl to School Ms Johnson? by: Lois G. Grambling
Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb by: Dr. Seuss
Snowball Fight! by: Jimmy Fallon

These are examples of sentence fluency because they rhyme, have repetition, various sentence lengths, and have a cadence quality.

My blog

Ok so I jumped on the band wagon and made a blog for my self... it's in the followers category :).

Tuesday, March 3rd :)

Today, I started off the class by sharing two writing samples from my kindergarten class. I decided to bring in two examples because they were short and they were so different from each other. They were really interesting to observe and reflect on! As a class, we talked about what each student did well on and what they could improve on too.

Then we moved on to talk about the Obama speech and discussed the 6+1 traits. We had a class discussion about what made each part that specific trait. One trait that seemed difficult to find was presentation.

Juanita then asked us to think about two important things: how we communicate with friends and family and what kinds of electronic technology we own. After thinking and discussing these questions, we were placed into groups based on the picture book that we brought in for class. (what trait it portrayed) In these groups, we were to think about how to send a list of our books to the class using technology. (she encouraged us to stay away from email!) This basically led us to the end of class time.

Our homework for Thursday: keep thinking about ways we can send our group's list. We will work on it next time!

GREAT CLASS TODAY! :)