Theme

Last week we began focusing on a new CAFE strategy.  Our new strategy is Universal Theme.  We read a few picture books to learn how to determine what the universal theme of a book is.

The first book we read was Alexander Who's Not Going To Move.  We decided that the theme of that book was moving isn't too bad.  We also learned that every book has a theme.  We brainstormed a list of possible themes.

The next day we read The Empty Pot which taught us about integrity.

Our First Day of School

We had a GREAT first day.  We were so incredibly busy that I forgot to take any pictures.  I ALWAYS take a class picture on the first day and totally forgot until the bus bell had rang yesterday.  Mrs. Jones popped in and snapped this picture for our Facebook page, so I snagged a copy of it so that we would at least have one picture of our first day together.

We began our morning learning a few procedures for our classroom.  Each student received a handbook and we talked through a few of the procedures like morning routine, entering the classroom, bathroom, etc...

After reviewing a few procedures we took some time to talk about the kind of teacher we want.  This is the list the students came up with.

We read two books yesterday.  The first one we read was Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus.  The kids thought it was funny and we learned how to check for comprehension while we read.  The second book we read was Chrysanthemum.  Again, the students loved the book.  We used this book to work on accuracy when reading by cross-checking when we are unsure of a word.

After we learned our two reading strategies we began discussing Daily Three Time.  We launched Read To Self so that students could begin working on independent reading.  We created this iChart to help us understand Read To Self.

We will add our last way to read a book tomorrow.

We spent most of the day getting to know one another and learning about our classroom.  I know we are going to have a great year together!

Tuesday and Wednesday Catch-Up

Culture Brainstorm

On Tuesday we began a class brainstorm list about culture.  Each student told me what they know about culture and they even added the different ways people can express themselves to our list.  We got a lot of great responses and a great jump start to our first IB unit.  My main question to the class during our brainstorm was, "Are cultures and countries the same thing?"  Ask your child what they think about that question!

Reading Goals

As we began reading workshop on Tuesday afternoon we took some time to set 2 goals for ourselves as readers.  The goals could be for improvement in comprehension, accuracy, or responsibility, and a goal could also be about what type(s) of books/genres they may wish to try.  Ask your child what his or her current reading goals are and how they plan to achieve them.

Spelling Menu!

On Tuesday we also learned what our spelling menu item choices are.  Here is a list of menu choices in case you need to reference them at some point.  They are also listed on the classroom website.  www.dcs.edu/webpages/lupton

Writer's Workshop
Getting an Idea

During writer's workshop we have a mini-lesson that focuses on a new skill and then we spend about 30 minutes practicing that new skill.  We keep all of our notes from mini-lessons in our writer's notebooks and then we have our writing sample behind our mini-lesson notes.  Today's skill was 'Getting an Idea'.  Good writer's need to know how to come up with an idea for writing so today we spent a little time getting a jump-start on a list of ideas.  We began brainstorming topics we could write about and came up with quite a nice list!

This is a picture of student's writing using their new list of ideas.  Today they were able to choose their own topic to write about!

The City of Ember

Main Characters & Setting

Compare & Contrast

We have been reading The City of Ember for about a week and a half now and we have been introduced to quite a few characters.  Today we took some time to create a poster to hang in our classroom to remind us of some of the main characters.  We also took a few minutes to discuss what the setting of a story is and to talk about the setting of The City of Ember.

The City of Ember also goes along with our culture unit.  The people of Ember have a very different culture from us.  We also learned that there are a few things that are similar between our culture and their culture.  Through this thought we learned that although there are many cultures that are all very different, they are also all very similar!

This is our Venn Diagram we constructed to compare and contrast our world and our cultures vs. the City of Ember and their culture.

Reader's Workshop

Expanding Our Vocabulary

Today in Reader's Workshop our focus was ways to expand our vocabulary.  We learned there are many ways to learn new words but the most important thing to remember is that when we come across a new word while reading we should find out it's meaning!  To practice this skill as an entire class we read a short non-fiction, informational book about butterflies.

While reading the book Butterfly we came across the word chrysalis.  Many of us were unfamiliar with the word chrysalis so we had to use a strategy to determine the meaning of the word.  The strategy we were able to use while reading this book was to look at the pictures around the word to help determine the meaning of the word.  We were able to look at the picture below and determine that a chrysalis is similar to a cocoon.

Other strategies we learned we could use are:
-ask an adult
-look up the word in the dictionary
-use context clues

Students then used their reader's notebooks as they read to record words they were unfamiliar with. Their challenge was to find out the meaning of the word by using one of our new strategies. We learned lots of new words through this activity today!

Reading and IB Planner + Picture Day!

Reading Skill

Today's reading skill was a comprehension strategy. We learned how to check for understanding as we read by retelling or summarizing what we read. We practiced by reading

Tornadoes is a non-fiction, informative text that we read as a class.  Once we finished reading Tornadoes we summarized what we read to see if we understood.  Students then practiced this new skill during their independent reading time.

Students spent about 20 minutes reading independently before getting their reader's notebooks and summarizing the pages the read on their IDR task sheet.  We will continue to work on this still tomorrow.

IB

Today we also began our first IB planner which is called Expressions.  Expressions is a planner that focuses on how we express ourselves.  We will take a close look at cultures and how they vary around the world.  We will begin each unit by making a folder for that particular unit.

We will also copy down the main parts of the planner so that we know what we're going to be studying. I think it is also important for students to understand the format of IB and learn the vocabulary associated with each planner.  Often times students have never heard of a "Central Idea" or a "Line of Inquiry" and both are a large part of what makes up an IB planner.

Picture Day!

Picture day is Wednesday, August 24th!  Don't forget to dress your best and smile big :).  We will take pictures in the morning so you may wish to bring a change of clothes for the remainder of the day.  Remember, this is the picture that will go in the yearbook.