Today in Reader's Workshop...

Today in Reader's Workshop the teaching point was "when you reread a book, you begin to understand some new things about it. One thing you begin to see is that all of the pages of a book go together.  As you read the pages, it's important to put them together with your own words to learn as much as you can".  This was a continuation of the strategy we focused on last week which was "great readers go slowly and reread to look for things they may have missed and learn even more".  The class became familiar with the phrase When you're done, you've just begun as it relates to looking at a book the first time.  Today reading partners sat back to back and read privately- slowly, noticing lots of details.  They may have even looked at their book a second time!  Then they turned to sit knee-to-knee with their partners and read to one another in their own words using the phrase "and then..." to connect the ideas from page to page.

We had our first meeting with our 5th grade Buddies!

Due to illness, it's been a while since my last post.  Today our class met their fifth grade buddies from Dayle Wright's class for the first time!  We did puzzles together as a "get to know you activity" and we began planning for our joint presentation at next week's all school morning meeting about "Trick or Treat for UNICEF".  The children in both classes are learning what a BIG difference a small amount of money can make in the lives of children who lack clean water, enough food, medicine and school supplies.  Mr. Wright and I will be helping the classes to prepare a skit that informs the school how easy it is to collect change as you collect candy.  We are hoping it will be a record setting year for Orchard School's UNICEF collection.