November 2014

Christmas has come and gone and parent/ teacher conferences are completed.  Both students and I should feel very accomplished. I appreciate November as a month when students have settled in, we have established norms in the classroom and the daily "rhythm and harmony" of the classroom has taken over. 

We have been collecting coffee cans since September. It took awhile to gather 26 so that each student could create a drum. However, making drums was a great way to review patterning concepts and check student's understanding. We created a number of patterns and use a pattern book to record and share them. As you can see from the pictures the children were very engaged!

We have been working on comprehension strategies and understanding of story. The Willow Award book "Larf" offered the perfect opportunity to look at character and character traits. We discussed what "inside" and "outside" of a character means and as a final product created a bulletin board depicting ourselves as characters inside and out.

Our school goals are related to math and literacy. We love math and have been working on a number unit. Skip counting is an important number skill and part of the Grade 1 and 2 curriculum. We combined our knowledge of skip counting, problem solving and our math journaling skills to create posters to represent this learning. The posters really are awesome and represent students understanding of these math concepts.

Math games are a fun way to practice the skills we have acquired.

October 2014

Mrs. Clark's Grade 1/2 Class 

September was a great but busy month. We have already established norms for Daily 5. This is really amazing, however, because of the number of students and the need for smaller groups we now have a Daily 6. I'm really impressed with how quickly this group of children was able to understand the Daily "6" process and consistently engage in the expected behaviors. The Daily 6 consists of; read to self, word work, read to someone, listen to reading, Ipads and work on writing. I think part of the reason they love it so much is because I do and there is so much independence and freedom of choice encouraged in this process. These Grade 1/2's love to work on their own, in pairs and in small groups!

We have been working on our Comprehension strategies. We completed our study of the book "Chalk" and created a bulletin board as our final project.

We began working on a new book "How To Be" by Lisa Brown.  

This is a book about how to be a: Bear Monkey Turtle Snake Spider Dog.This is a book about how to be a Person.

The comprehension strategy "questioning" has been the focus for our book study. “Thoughtful readers ask questions not only as they read, but also before and after reading. 

We began our book study by looking at the title and cover and generating questions. For example: Why is the book called "How to be?", What do the colors mean? Why are there animals in the picture? As we read and discover the book we attempt to answer the questions and gain a deeper understanding of the author's purpose and message. As Amani, a Grade 2 student in our class stated, " The book means that a person can be anything they want to be." Wonder, infer and discuss is an important part of this process. We will be learning more about "background knowledge".  Activating prior knowledge and building background improves understanding.

We began working on our final project! We are using the book and the structure of the text and pictures as a model for our own "How To Be?". Students chose an animal. We grouped students who chose the same or very similar animals. Their task was to create several movements, actions, sounds to show how their animal behaves. We presented these to the class and I made a chart recording students ideas. The whole class discussed how this animal can be compared to a human, what behavior or characteristics are similar. Our next step is to use these words and phrases to write our own model of Lisa Brown's book. We will write first and then illustrate the words and phrases we chose to describe our animals. I am hoping to use the Ipads to photograph and record students discussing their project. I will post the finished product soon!

September 2014

The new school year has begun. This year I have 25 Grade 1's and 2's - a new challenge!

We have already begun work on our Daily 5. Students are learning about the 3 Ways to Read a Book, the first component of Daily 5, "Read to Self", and "Reading Salad". We review and practice the 3 ways to read a book daily; read the words, read the pictures and retell. I presented a lesson on each of these to ensure students understanding. I used the book "Dinosaur Day" an almost wordless picture book to reinforce this idea. It's so important to build their confidence and belief that they can read even if they don't know all the words. It works! We made an anchor chart showing how "Read to Self" should look and sound. The first practice took us 8 times before we were able to follow the behaviors we decided on. The second time only took 3 - we're on our way!  

This year I made a chef's hat and made a real show of the "Reading Salad" lesson. It was memorable and that's what I was hoping for. We also began work on the reading comprehension strategies. Students are learning, what is a question and how do we use questions as we read to help us understand the text. this relates closely to the "Reading Salad" components - Real Reading =  Text + Thinking!

The Grand Finale: Part 4

We continued working on answering the questions we had generated. 

We used Linda Ashman's website to discover some of the answers related 

to the creation of the book, the author's process and the central

theme.

  http://www.lindaashman.com/

Some of the "thicker" questions we looked at:

"Why is the book called rain?''

Why is the title only one word?

Why are there only a few words as text?
Why did the author call it the Rain/Shine café?
Why did the author write this book?

After looking at Linda Ashman's website and some whole group discussion 
students were placed in small groups and given a question to discuss.

Some of the  thoughts from students:

As you can see students figured out the central theme of the story!!!

Stay tuned for additional activities and story writing related to 

"Rain" by Linda Ashman.

The Grand Finale: Part 3

To put into practice the questioning strategy students selected a question and were asked to do the following: 

1) answer the question

2) identify how they answered the question (T, BK, I, DD)

3) create an illustration for their answer

Here are some samples:

Students shared their answers using the digital projector. 

They answered questions from peers and discussed their work.

We went back to our list of questions and decided which we had answered 

and which ones we needed to continue to work on. 

The Grand Finale: Part 2

I went back to the book  "Comprehension Strategies" by Tanny McGregor.  I introduced students to the 4 ways we could answer our questions and  modeled sorting the questions.  Again I used the "I do", "We do", "You do" process. 

 Students then sorted the remaining questions in small groups. Each group was given a set of questions to decide how we were going to answer them; using the text T, background knowledge BK, inferring I, digging deeper DD. Students placed their letters (T,BK,I,DD) on the question chart. As I circulated to observe students I noticed there were good discussions happening. Students were disagreeing on how to answer questions and were giving proof for their choices. 

For further practice students were asked to choose a "Good Fit" book and generate "Before, During and After" questions (at least 5). They were asked to record their questions and then identify how they would answer these questions using the 4 ways.

The Grand Finale: Part 1 

Well, the school year is over and I have to say it was an amazing journey for me and the students. Our work on comprehension strategies was a highlight for me. In the following blog entries I will share the work students did and the process we went through.  Mrs. Clark

I began with the text "Comprehension Strategies" by Tanny McGregor. This book provides so many practical ideas and teacher friendly lessons. I completed both the "Reading Salad" and the "Metacognition" lessons with students. We practiced "Real Reading" as an "I Do", "We Do" and "You Do" process. Students latched onto this and continued to demonstrate this skill during Daily 5 and independent reading.

The lesson on "Questioning" and subsequent anchor chart that resulted from it really demonstrated that my students were capable of the "deeper thinking" that this process required. 

Next Step was to introduce the book "Rain" by Linda Ashman. This really is an amazing wordless picture book with a universal message. The pictures are created with such detail and and thought. Each page evokes discussion, questions and the opportunity to make inferences. 

I modeled the questioning strategy for  students focusing on the front cover of the book; the title and the picture. After modeling several questions students were so eager to share their own that I began writing all of our questions onto a chart labeled "Before", "During", and "After".  The process of generating questions took a week! It was very difficult holding off on discussions or answers to each question but we wanted to focus on the creation of good questions. By the time we were finished we had 27 thoughtful questions and students who were very eager to answer them!

Part 2 coming soon!