Mea Culpa! Mea Culpa! And moving on....

Ok...I confess...I have stopped doing the book study. Just not into it for some reason. Plus, I feel pretty good about the dendrites I am building in my classroom right now!

So, no more guilt about not posting my chapter responses (hence the long absence from posting since I figured I should be posting about the book study!!! Aaaah...shoulda, woulda, coulda...) and moving on to new things...

I have recently started reading the book The Secret World of Og by Pierre Berton to the class. Have you ever read it?

click here to find it online

It is a true Canadian classic written in 1961. It is the story of four children who go on an adventure to rescue their baby brother who went through a trapdoor in the floor of their playhouse. The trapdoor leads to a secret underground world filled with mysterious little green people.

I am loving reading it again and am really enjoying watching the faces of the students as the adventure progresses. One of these days I am going to get them to draw what they are visualizing as I read since I know that their imaginations are in overdrive listening!

This book holds a special place in my childhood memory. In grade 5, I found myself  in a new school, that I really didn't like, with a teacher named Mrs. Gordon whom I didn't really like all that much either! I think she might be one of the reasons I went into teaching as I seem to recall the teachers I didn't like more than the ones I did. I guess I was inspired to NOT be like them!!!! But I digress....

One of my only positive memories of that year is of Mrs. Gordon sitting in the front of the class on a stool, reading to us from her copy of The Secret World of Og. Back then it had only been around for around 20 years (do the math and you can figure out how old I am!!!!) After she read us the book, we wrote letters to the author and Mrs. Gordon sent them off to his publisher. I will always remember the day the reply arrived. A letter for us! Written by Pierre Berton! On bright Og-green writing paper with a little drawing of a man from Og in the bottom corner. Oh! The excitement! 

The only other late elementary memory that comes close to topping my Og one is when Gordon Korman came to talk to our class about his book This Can't Be Happening at MacDonald Hall. He was only about 18 years old and had already written a chapter book (at age 12!) and published it! Wow! But that is a story for another day....  

Anywho, if you have never read The Secret World of Og then what are you waiting for? Go read it!!! And, if you have read it, go read it again! You won't be sorry. I promise!

Cheers!

Olwyn

Friday Favourites

There are some days when all I can think is, "I don't get paid nearly enough to do this job."

Today was one of them.

Activities that I had planned to take 20 minutes took close to double that because I had to keep stopping (a bad case of chatter boxes in our class today!) to wait for listening. And then wait some more and then some more. And then, well, you get the idea...

We did our spelling review and they all looked at me like they had no idea what words I was saying. And this after working on the words each and every day this week!!!!! At one point, my grumpy, frustrated, very annoyed and on the way to truly cross voice came out and I had to stop, count to ten in my head and then start again.

But, on the bright side, it was a great teaching moment. See? Even teachers go in the red zone sometimes!!!! What great role modeling! See kids? This is a strategy to use when you feel like your head is going to spin around in circles and blow off the top of your neck!!! Try it sometime! It really helps!

So, I think it is good that I am starting Friday Favourites this week because it will force me to stop paying attention to all the things that seemed to go wrong today and focus on the wonderful stuff that happened this week.

So, here goes. My five favourite things that happened in our classroom this week....

1. I got a good laugh when one of the students who had brought in a chocolate cake for his birthday (pre-sliced by his parents. Thank you very much!) told me that I had to try some because "my heart would blow into pieces it was so good!" I don't eat wheat and definitely did not want to deal with the stomach issues that would have resulted if I had eaten a whole piece but I did have a very small nibble and, he was right, it was delish! (And, trust me, I needed the laugh today!)

2. Watching a group of very physical boys being completely absorbed by a game of UNO for almost half an hour. Wow! Is there magic dust in UNO? I want to get me some of that!!!!!!

3. Getting snail mail (I love real mail, don't you? There is just something so exciting about opening up the letter or package that I don't get with email) from Amazon with new books to read to the class.


Great book for descriptive writing lessons



Wonderful book by Angela Johnson for teaching personal narrative writing



Used this book to introduce using a pencil to do all writing (no more writing with crayons!!!!) before I gave each of the students their personal pencil for their pencil cases.

4. The feeling I got when one of the students asked me out on the playground, "Ms. Hughes, when is the rest of our community coming out to play?" My heart did a little flutter at how easily the students are accepting the idea that we are not a stand alone class with one teacher but a community with three teachers and a lot of friends!

5. Getting the go ahead to order the math program our community wants to use this year (more on that coming soon!) Now we just have to order the books. Yeah!!!!!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Ms. Hughes

Summer Reading Tip #1

Have you been reading every day so far this summer? I hope so! I have been inhaling books like you wouldn’t believe. I have been reading a novel a day pretty much. I am so grateful for our public library. Imagine if we didn’t have that amazing resource! We are so, so, so lucky to be able to read so many wonderful books.

I wanted to take a minute to send out a reading tip for parents. I really want the students to maintain or increase their reading abilities over the summer and that means doing some thinking and talking about their reading!

Beginning readers often get so involved in decoding the letters and words that they forget to stop and think about their reading.

I tell them that reading is like a sandwich.

On one slice of bread is the words - being able to read them and know how to say them properly.

On the other slice is the comprehension or understanding what the words mean and how they come together to form ideas within a story.

You have to have both sides of the sandwich for it to be complete, for it to make sense and be a proper sandwich.

So, today I want to talk a little bit about comprehension. There are different strategies good readers use to help them comprehend what they are reading. I will be going over many of them this summer. But for today we are focusing on...

Connections

 Good readers make connections in three ways.

• They connect the text to something personal about themselves (text to self)
• They connect to something out in the world (text to world)
• They connect to another book (text to text)

Making connections gets our schema working. Connections make a book more meaningful and they help us to enjoy what we are reading even more.

I think that making connections is one of the easiest strategies to use - especially the text to self type of connection. We all have life experiences and so we are all capable of finding something within a story with which to connect. I find that the older I get and the more my schema is filled with life experiences, other books, trips, information etc. the more I make connections in my reading without even having to stop and think if I have a connection. It is just there!

I am going to walk you through an example of making connections with a very simple story. Imagine I am reading the book Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown (I am pretty sure that there is not a child or parent in our continent who does not know this story).

As I read, I stop every few pages and ask myself “Does that make me think of anything else?” or think to myself "That reminds me of..."

Each time I can answer or fill in what it reminds me of, I have made a connection! Just like that!

Here are some of my connections:

1. This book makes me think about when I was little and my nanny, Wilson, would read to me. I still have my first hard copy of this book given to me in 1974. (text to self)
2. This in turn makes me wonder about other children, in other countries reading this story. I wonder if they have this book in places like Africa. And, if they do, is it a prized possession?(text to world)
3. The cow jumping over the moon reminds me of l the nursery rhyme it came from (text to text)
4. The title makes me think of the book Goodnight Ipad which came out recently and which I read to my class, not in book format, but on the smartboard. So 21st Century!!!! (text to text)        
5. A bowl full of mush makes me think of all the cream of wheat I ate as a child.(text to self)
6. The ending where it says goodnight to the air and the stars etc. gives me a lovely, comfy feeling. It reminds me of the feeling of childhood. (text to self)
7. The little old lady rocking in the room makes me think of the rocking chair that my Grandmama had on her back porch (text to self)

So, you see how reading something can make your mind go in all different directions? Most of the connections a young reader will make are of the text to self variety. Or, at least, they will probably be able to think of these more easily. Often I find that when reading one story, it will make a child think of another story (text to text). This is especially true of fairy tales. Text to world connections can be a little trickier for the beginning reader. It just depends on their personal life experience and how much is already in their schema.

Parents, you can help your child to make better connections by sitting down once or twice a week and reading to them. Pick a book that your child wants to read (it does not matter if they can read it or not) and then read out loud to your child. Stop every once in awhile to share a connection you make with the story, stop every once in awhile to ask your child if they have any connections. 

I don't care if your child is already reading chapter books. Create a time when they listen to you read and ask them to tell you their connections. Don't just leave them reading on their own all the time and assume that they are understanding everything that they read. Chances are very high that they are not!!!!!

schemas!!!!

Finally Some Photos!!!!

It seems that I promised a life time ago to post some photos of our word work activities. I finally managed to remember to bring my camera home from work to download photos.

Last week was the first full week where they had to use the tic-tac-toe word work sheets. Since we missed one day of Daily 5, I let them only do 2 jobs on the board instead of 3. Every day at the start of Daily 5 I did my little spiel about how they needed to go to word work and get two jobs done. Even with me telling them EVERY single day to get the jobs done or they wouldn't get choosing time on Friday, I still had 15 students who had not completed their work. Some of them had spent over an hour at word work during the week and gotten NOTHING done!!! Not even one job or even half of a job done! Nada! Zippo! How is that even possible?

Ohmigoodness, I am convinced that the majority of the class just heard blah, blah, blah, word work, blah, blah blah!!!!!  I could have just torn my hair out and screamed when I was marking the Daily 5 books. I mean, what were they doing all week?!?!

The shock on their faces Friday morning when they realized that I was dead serious about taking away their choosing time was priceless. And the speed at which some of them started doing their word work this week was pretty funny, too! My fingers are crossed that I will not have to take away any choosing this Friday.

So, what does word work look like these days? Well we are doing jobs that require specific words using our weekly words (this week they are all with short vowel e). The tic-tac-toe sheet looks like this:

The words on this one are the more difficult level words.

Short vowel e at the beginning or inside words.

Here is a sampling of the work sheet options:

Rainbow  Writing

Clipboard Cruising

Shopping for Words

Stamp A Word

Boggle

This week we will be learning how to do Super Sentences and Magnet Words. Students will then be able to make a tic-tac-toe in three different directions.

In other subject areas, today the grade 2's started their interviews for Social Studies. One of our learning outcomes is to learn about the roles and responsibilities of people who work in our school. To that end the grade 2's have been in project teams for a week preparing questions to ask in their interviews. Today 3 teams did interviews. We had interviews with one of our kindergarten teachers, the principal and the vice-principal. Everyone did an awesome job! I am videoing the interviews so that the class can watch themselves later. I was so proud of how they all conducted themselves while our guests were visiting.

We did some really fun art today around the story Snowmen At Night by Caralyn Buehner.

We did pictures of snowmen doing different activities at night using oil pastels then we wrote about what they were doing. They turned out great! The imaginations in our class are pretty stellar. We had snowmen golfing, racing cars, playing wii, skating and more. I will upload photos soon but, in the meantime, I am going to do a bulletin board beside the office to show them off.

Anywho, that is it for now. I am off to eat some dinner and scour pinterest for more ideas. I swear it is more addictive than caffeine!

Ms. Hughes

Introducing C.A.F.E.

Today we learned about the Reading C.A.F.E. in Daily 5. I have it up on a board that looks like this... It is the "menu" of reading strategies that good readers use all the time. I want the class to be aware of the strategies and start to see which ones they are good at and which ones they need work on.

C is for Comprehension. A is for Accuracy & Awareness. F is for Fluency. E is for Expanding Vocabulary. I have wanted to add this dimension to the Daily 5 ever since I first read about it on the Daily 5 site. I have had the best of intentions each year but somehow have just never got it together. Well, this year is THE year!

We learned about two strategies today for Comprehension. One is the Picture Walk which readers do to determine if they are interested in a picture book and also to give them a hint of what the story might be about. This strategy is one of the prediction strategies.

And we started to learn about the 5 Reading Powers. We started with the strategy of making text to self connections. I read the story Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by JudithViorst and shared my connections with the class. It is hard to get the idea of us "thinking about our thinking" but it is so important to put our thinking into words to help us be better readers.

The class all liked me sharing stories about my childhood that came up as my connections. I loved the chorus of "me, too" that I heard when I was telling them about my sneaky older brother who would tease me until I yelled and then I would get sent to my room while he just sat there looking innocent!!!! Obviously the sibling relationship hasn't changed all that much in 30 years!

Tomorrow I am going to re-read the story and have the class give their connections. I know that they were already thinking of them because so many hands went up when the story was finished. They were not happy to have to wait a whole day to hear the story and get their turn but the bell was about to ring and lunch was calling!

I am loving, loving, loving how into reading this group is. Reading has always been such a huge part of my life and I love being able to share that love with my students. The world may be moving towards books on computer devices but I don't think that anything can ever replace the feeling of holding a book in your hands and feeling like the author is speaking right to you. Of flipping through the pages as fast as you can read because you can't wait to find out how it ends. Of walking through a library and seeing all the wonderful book spines just waiting for you to reach for them and pull them out. Nothing can beat the feeling of reading a book. Nothing. 

Ms. Hughes

Fun Friday

or maybe I should say Finally Friday?!?! I've been teaching with a cold all week and the coughing every night is not making for very relaxing sleeps. As a result, my patience has not been as high as I would like. Plus, I can say for sure that the "honeymoon" phase in our class is definitely over!!!!! We are all getting very comfortable with the classroom, each other and the routines. Perhaps a little too comfortable! Nothing that a good weekend's worth of sleep and some review of classroom expectations won't fix!

I wanted to share something really awesome that happened today at choosing time. Choosing time in our class means exactly what it sounds like - the students get to choose what they would like to do. They go to lego or other construction activities (marble run, train set etc) or read books or draw or write a story or create art or....you get the idea! Making choosing time happen is a philosophical decision for me. There is so much in the curriculum that I could easily spend every single second of the day having the class doing worksheets and teacher driven activities BUT I believe that children need the free choice time to play and explore - they need student driven activities. It is during these times that they are able to consolidate other learning and it is during choosing that I get to see aspects of the class that I can't see during other activities. To me it is an invaluable part of the school day.

Today one of the students brought in a book she wanted me to read to the class. I read it during Daily 5 time and loved it! This is one book I will be buying this weekend at Kidsbooks. It is called The Rough Face Girl and is an Algonquin version of Cinderella.

It was written by Rafe Martin and David Shannon did the illustrations. The writing, the pictures, everything was just right. You know when you read a book that just makes your heart feel a little more full? That just adds a little something good to your soul? This is one of those books. I loved how this Cinderella story does not completely follow the traditional one. The main character does not just sit around waiting for a fairy god mother to appear and help her escape her life of drudgery. This character takes action - she makes her own outfit, jewelry and footwear before heading out to meet the Invisible Being to whom she ends up married. He doesn't marry her because of her outer beauty though. He marries her because he has the ability to see into a person's heart to see their true personality. He falls in love with who she is NOT what she looks like. This is my kind of book.

After reading this book, the class went to choosing. A little while later I noticed three students looking at the book. They had found fabric in the art zone and went to work. One of them headed to the library to ask Conan the Librarian for books about First Nations people. What were they doing you ask? Well, they were building a wigwam. How cool is that? These are the "leather" sides to the wigwam being decorated in symbols just like in the story. I can't wait to see what they use for the logs!

It is still in process but don't you think it is going to be awesome? Now the question is: If I had taught a lesson on First Nations people and assigned the task of creating and building a wigwam, would these students have created something like this? I don't think so. Hearing the story, having a small spark flare inside them at the listening, being given the time to collaborate and the freedom to choose materials, all of these things worked together to create this learning opportunity. And that is the reason that I will never, ever, ever drop choosing time from my weekly schedule.

Ms. Hughes