Seesaw Ambassadors

We have amazing Seesaw knowledge in our classroom.  They are helping me and one another.  I am really enjoying watching them work together and I love how proud they are of the work they are doing.  These badges were created and placed on the top of desks to tell people they are there to help anyone who needs it.  Yay! 

Seesaw

This week’s Seesaw activity was reading a portion of your reading group book out loud.  Kids videotaped themselves reading their books and sent them your way.  We had a few technical issues, so if you don’t see one from your child, it’s coming soon.  These will be done throughout the school year so they are able to hear how much they improve over the course of the school year.  I have always done this as a part of my reading groups and am thrilled to be able to do it using Seesaw. 

Choose Kind

One of my favorite pairs of earrings!  :)  

The book Wonder is fantastic on many levels.  The messages within the book are important and help us to have fabulous conversations about how we should treat people and what we can do to be kind.  It’s also told from the point of view of many characters within the book.  We are currently in the first chapter, which is told from Auggie’s point of view.  There are many positive messages in this book and it’s allowing us to talk about how to act – even when no one is watching.  4^th graders are starting to come into their own and learning how to act and how to treat people, even when they aren’t around adults.  At one point, Auggie’s mom says something about a character (Julian) being the kind of kid who acts one way around kids and another way around adults.  That’s helpful for kids to hear and talk about.  Why would he act differently?  What does that mean? 

Science - WORMS!

We continue to study worms and will dive deeper into nature’s recyclers in the next few weeks.  We are have a great time putting our science notebooks together and they have a lot of great observations and questions about worms. We are reading about worms, watching videos and observing them too!

Mix Pair Share!

I introduced them to MIX PAIR SHARE! this week.  This is one of my favorite things to do in our classroom!  Kids walk or dance around the room to the music and when the music stops, they need to find a partner (you can’t have the same partner twice!) and answer the question I pose.  Once you’ve both had the chance to share, you go back to back without talking, and wait for everyone to finish.  I then call on people and ask them to share what their partner said, a great way to hone their listening skills and assures that they will do their best to listen to each other.  Some questions I posed this week:  What was your favorite scene in The Wild Robot?  Describe the differences between lines, rays, line segments and parallel lines.  What questions do you have about worms?  What are some character traits of Auggie?  Mix Pair Share! can be used to review for tests, share information about themselves, or answer questions about any topic.  And, as an added bonus, they get to move around the classroom. 

Reader’s Notebooks

We are spending a lot of time writing about our reading.  We are using sticky notes, anchor charts and our reader’s notebooks.  This week, we concentrated on Wonder and added things about character traits of Auggie and vocabulary words from the first part of the book (told from Auggie’s point of view). 

Reading Groups

I love reading groups.  I love everything about them.  We started our groups on Monday and had a great time meeting this week.  Here are some things we will do this year in our reading groups: comprehension skills, vocabulary and word work, fluency, text to text connections, text to self connections, text to world connections, writing about our reading, making predictions, and explore a wide variety of genres.  It’s always my intent to get your kids excited about books and learn skills while reading ANY kind of book.  We read graphic novels, magazines, novels, and everything in between.  I’m excited to meet with your kids!  YahOoo!