Category: Language Arts

Writer’s Workshop Published Books

While some students are off at ESL the rest of the class has been working on improving their writing and developing their sense of story.  Students write stories and, once they have a few completed ones, they then choose one to ‘publish’.  The stories are edited by the students (and with the teacher), covers are made, stories are written on ‘good copy’ papers, an ‘About the Author’ page is completed, and the books are ‘published’.  Students then get to read these to the whole class – similar to our ‘Guest Reader’ visits.

Beginning next week, ESL students will be staying in class during our Writer’s Workshop times.  I look forward to working through this process with them so their stories can be added to our growing collection of student written/published books.

Student Guest Readers

For the past few months we have been sharing some of our favourite books (and showing our greatly improved reading skills) to the class during our “Guest Reader” times each day.  Students choose books, practise them on their own and with a friend, read the book to me, and then share it with the whole class in the ‘seat of honour’ – the teacher’s pink chair!

We are currently on Round 4 (each student is now reading their 4th book to the class).  Once the student has finished reading their book the other students share their thoughts on how the student did – including their choice of book, their volume level, and the clarity of reading.

It has been a great opportunity for shared reading and enjoyment of a variety of books.

Valentine’s Day Fun!

We had a really fun day today!  When students arrived they delivered their valentines to their friends.  Some were a little large for our heart holders!

For Math today we did some addition questions with missing addends as a reminder of how to solve problems with different unknown numbers.  Students then got to work on some Valentine puzzles and word searches.

This afternoon (after our library visit) we wrote a poem following the format of a story that we read yesterday – How Much Do You Love Me?  We worked through a process of brainstorming things that our family members love a lot.  The students then put these together in the framework of our poem.  For example,

I love you as much as DAD loves TO WATCH FOOTBALL ON SUNDAYS ON THE COUCH.

They wrote about 3 different family members and then for the finale they had to decide HOW LONG they would love them – i.e.

I’ll love you until DINOSAURS RULE THE EARTH AGAIN.  That’s how much I love you.

Once they completed their frames they wrote these poems out on heart-shaped papers, cut them out, and glued them to pink construction paper.  These are now posted on a bulletin board outside of our classroom.  Come by and check them out – they are quite well done!

Students had a choice between a Valentine’s activitiy (card making) or Centres for the end-of-day period.  At this time students got to enjoy the snacks sent in – and the treats from their Valentine’s holders.  A huge thank you to all those who sent in goodies for us to eat today!  We have some leftovers which will be enjoyed tomorrow.

REMINDER to send in the 100’s Day vests and small treats for our 100’s celebration tomorrow.