Writer's Workshop
We are working on strategies to bring our stories to life for our readers! We have learned, practiced, and model unfreezing our characters to make them move and talk. We've learned about quotation marks and how dialogue can help tell a story. We have watched how authors take a small moment and tell it in itsy bitsy steps. We have learned how adding in our feelings and thoughts can add details for our reader. We even used drama to act out our stories with our writing partners!
Acting out our stories.....
Collaborating with partners....
Close Reading
Close reading refers to the behavior of reading a text thoughtfully, making meaning as you go, stopping to ask questions, understanding explicit features, and inferring along the way. We spend a lot of time modeling close reading so that children can begin to demonstrate this behavior more independently. This week we focused on 2 high interest stories to help us gain experience with close reading. The first was I am Going by Mo Willems. The second book was Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet by Diane deGroat. Children demonstrated their understanding in their reading journals and within small groups.
Drawing pictures of the important parts of the text...
Illustrating key features....
Doubles and Near Doubles
We are continuing to build smart strategies for fluently adding and subtracting. This week we worked on doubles and near doubles. Children used manipulatives to build double facts and then recorded matching equations. We worked in small groups to build doubles again, but this time we added 1 or 2 cubes to show doubles plus 1 and doubles plus 2. We learned that knowing a double fact can help you solve a near double fact.
Building Double Towers.....
Playing games with doubles....
Thanks so much for reading about some of the learning happening in Room 27! Check back again soon! Don't forget we have our Halloween parade on Monday, October 31st at 9:30. Hope to see you there!
