Number The Stars

Our first read aloud for the second semester was Number the Stars.  Number the Stars is a historical fiction novel that takes place in Denmark during World War II.  Hitler and his Nazi regime have taken over Denmark and are driving the Jews out.  

While reading this novel the students were able to learn a little about life for Jews during World War II. They loved the novel and hated for it to end.  This picture was taken on the day we finished the book.  They all wanted to gather around my desk because a book is a whole lot better when you're super close to the reader :).

Day Two - Another GREAT Day!

This morning we went to the computer lab to take a STAR Reading test.  The STAR Reading test provided each student with an average reading level.  I met with each student during Daily Three time today and discussed their reading level with them.  The two of us devised a plan for selecting appropriate books for them to read.  We will do a more detailed lesson on choosing appropriate books later in the week.  Ask your child what their reading level is and ask what baskets they are allowed to choose books from!

Following counseling we came back to the classroom and discussed respect.  We plan to have respect for each other, our classroom, ourselves, and our belongings this year.  We had a great conversation and came up with some great ideas.

Later in the morning we had a chance to get in a small math lesson.  We began by working on daily data using a Venn Diagram.  We set-up our math notebooks and began writing down our observations about the data we created.

We also had a chance to use numbers to answer questions about ourselves.

We began our first class read aloud, The City of Ember.  We also read aloud a picture book called Three Cheers for Tacky.  The kids loved the book and learned how to tune into interesting vocabulary as we read.  We finished up reading with our Read To Self time.  We are working on building our stamina back up from summer break so we only read independently for 10 minutes.  Ask your child if they remember what it means to build stamina!

We had another a great day!

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!