Reading!  Reading!  Reading!

WOoooooOOoT!  READING.  IS. SO.  MUCH.  FUN. IN. ROOM.  306.  Our book list is up on the door (and this picture was take a few days ago, so it already needs updating!), and we continue to read The Wild Robot along with fabulous picture books that help us with our mini lessons.  Ask your kids about what we are reading!  We read a little history of the pineapple this week.  Ask them something they learned about it!  We also started our first LABEL this week.  Labels are used mostly in our Reader’s Notebooks.  This week, they were asked to write about a book they are reading on their own.  What’s it about?  Summarize your book.  Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?  Writing about our reading will be an extremely important part of our reading this year.  Providing EVIDENCE will crucial.  Saying something isn’t enough.  You need to back your thoughts with evidence too.  Mini-lessons are done weekly to model a new skill, or to practice a skill we have previously worked on.  This week, we worked on highlighting unknown words in the pineapple passage we read.  This was a short article, so we read it three times.  On our first read, we read it straight through.  On the second pass, they highlighted any words that they didn’t know.  On the last pass, they tried to figure out what the words may mean by using sentence clues.   Future mini-lessons include:  using sticky notes while reading, inferencing, making predictions, point of view, character descriptions/traits, and SO many more!  I will be assessing kids for the next week or so.  When I’m finished, we will begin reading groups!  Reading groups are one of my favorite things to teach!  Stay tuned for more reading group information!