Lovin' Literacy!

Our study of non-fiction text features continues. Yesterday and today we focused on insets and sidebars. We added them to our list of non-fiction text features!

Yesterday we focused specifically on insets. I modeled my own thinking of how my brain processed an inset that I had found in one of our social studies readers. We have been studying the economy of the five regions of the U.S. so this text helped to combine literacy and our social studies content.

For guided practice, I photocopied a different page from the text about strawberries in California.

Students recorded their thinking in their Thoughtful Logs in the Genre Learning tab.

During guided practice, I noticed there were a few kids who still struggled with connecting the text, the bigger pictures, and the inset. I pulled these students during guided reading and used yet another page from our social studies reader to practice the skill one more time. Students read about rice plants in Louisiana.

Students recorded their thinking in their Thoughtful Logs after telling me verbally what their thoughts were for each step of our process in regards to understanding insets.

Today we reviewed our learning of insets from yesterday and then focused on sidebars.

I modeled my thinking using a page from our social studies reader that informed me of a potato festival in the Midwest.

For guided practice, I photocopied a different page from the same reader that had a sidebar in it. The text overlapped with our social studies content and discussed an oyster festival in the Northeast.

After students read the guided practice page, they recorded their thinking in their Thoughtful Logs.

Here is one student's response:

As I've mentioned several times in this blog, we are studying the economy of each of the five U.S. regions. Today we focused specifically on the Northeast. I assigned each student to a reader at his/her independent level. Students summarized what they learned about one specific industry or product in the Northeast.

I worked with some students to read about the fishing industry in the Northeast. Together we wrote a summary of what we learned about fishing and recorded it on our notes sheet that we will later use to create a magazine about our nation's economy!

April read about cranberries in the Northeast. She used her own words and key words from the text to help her write her summary! 

In Writer's Workshop today, we used two pages from the mentor text Bubba the Cowboy Prince to continue our exploration of verbs and adverbs. We highlighted the verbs in yellow.

I focused more specifically on the word 'perfectly' on this page to introduce adverbs.

We recorded our learning in our Thoughtful Logs in the Powerful Words and Phrases section.

Students selected three verbs and three appropriate adverbs and wrote sentences to demonstrate their understanding.

I had a teacher email me and ask if I could post all my anchor charts for our writing process. Here they are!

In other literacy activities, we got to meet with our second-grade buddies in Mrs. Adams' class. We helped our buddies learn to use a great spelling website. Students any age can use this website at home to practice their spelling words!

And last but certainly not least, students who left the classroom during learning time only 5 times or less during Quarter 1 (to go to the bathroom, get a drink, or get something from their backpack) got to eat lunch in the classroom. I love students who value their time IN the classroom! Way to to Natasha, Tyler, Summer, Blake, Adam, Casey, Cody, Katie, and Elisa!

Homework:

1. Reading - 15 mins., Turkey Log

2. Math - 10 mins. facts, 8.4 

3. Spelling - Sentences, Test Fri.

4. Social Studies - North America Map Test, Fri.

                         - Finish Northeast notes

3-For-1 Special!

We've done a lot in the past three days. I'll do my best to keep you all caught up! I've been having some issues with my computer so it was a little bit of a struggle to blog this week.

We created a publishing anchor chart to add to our Writer's Workshop wall. We discussed that a published piece of writing is a cleaned-up version of our revised and edited version. When a student is publishing, we should see their sloppy copy, their Quick Word book, and their clean looseleaf paper on their desk. Their paper should be slanted to enable the best handwriting.

We also talked about how to make a cover for a published piece of writing. Our publishing wall has pockets for each student to store his or her writing, so I explained that when you make a cover, you will first want to trace a thin line to indicate the part of the cover that will stick out of the pocket. In this top 2 inches is where the title, author's name, and date need to appear. This allows a reader to easily identify the title of the piece of writing and the writer. The picture for the cover can go on the area below the line. Below you will see Teagan tracing a line to figure out where she needs to put her information for her cover.

We've also been practicing summary writing.

 I modeled again how to use a vocabulary organizer to write my summary.

Finally, this morning we read Tulip Sees America as a mentor text for word choice.

We took a closer look at the language of some of the states visited in the book.

We pulled out the words that were powerful and painted a picture of Iowa and categorized some of the author's language. We decided that good authors use colors and similes to help paint a picture of what they are writing about!

To store this learning, students recorded the powerful phrases from the three states we looked at in the Powerful Words and Phrases section of their Thoughtful Logs.

 Homework:
1. Reading - 15 mins., Pizza Log
2. Math - 10 mins. facts
3. Spelling - Sentences, Test Fri.
4. Social Studies - Poster due Wed.
5. Thursday envelope

Peer Conferencing & Summarizing

As we move forward in the writing process, today we discussed how to peer conference in our room. I prepared a student sheet that gives students guidelines of what to discuss in a peer conference. Changes made to a draft during a peer conference will be done in purple marker. The colors allow me to see students' strengths and areas for growth in terms of drafting (gray), revising (red), editing (blue), and peer conferencing (purple).

After I modeled the process with one of our student writers, I put students in pairs, gave them a pink peer conferencing sheet, and off they went to try it out themselves! I was fairly impressed with how on task students were! I tried to keep the peer conferencing sheet simple so that student tasks during a peer conference would be manageable for all students.

During reading today, we continued using the mentor text A Drop of Water by Walter Wick. Our mini-lesson today was on pulling out the main ideas and summarizing what we read in non-fiction texts. Before we read one of the chapters in the book, I wrote down a few words in my word predictions column that I thought I might see in a chapter about water. Then I read the chapter about water, which ended up being more about ice. As I read, I checked off any word prediction words that appeared in the text and also wrote down new core vocabulary from the text that I thought would be important to capture the main ideas of what I read. After I read the chapter, I closed the book and used only my checked off word ('drop') and my new core vocabulary to orally put my words together into a summary of what I read. After I had figured out the best order for my thoughts, I wrote down my summary.

For guided reading today, we practiced this summarizing strategy, using leveled readers about the land and climate of the Southwest (which is what we studied earlier in social studies today). These leveled readers were perfect non-fiction texts to practice our new summarizing strategy while also enhancing our learning about the land and climate of the Southwest.

One group was given the focus word 'desert'. Students wrote down 5 prediction words first, and we shared our schema with the rest of the group. We also discussed a few hard words that they would encounter while reading, and then they set off to read their three pages about deserts in the Southwest while I listened in and took notes. For the first read through, students checked off any words in their word prediction column that appeared in their text. Next time we meet, we will discuss the core vocabulary from each paragraph of their assigned reading.

One guided reading group read about dams. Here you can see Ana's word predictions prior to reading about dams. After students read, we decided as a group as to what the core vocabulary was from each paragraph. Tomorrow we will begin to use the core vocabulary to help us write a summary of their pages about the dams in the Southwest.

Another group was given the focus word 'Southwest' as a way to activate their brains. It was awesome to see that so many of the things we had discussed in social studies earlier in the day had appeared in students 'word prediction' columns. This group discussed the core vocabulary after they read and each student wrote his/her summary at the bottom.

Homework:
1. Reading - 15 mins., Pizza Log
2. Math - 10 mins. facts, Ch. 5 Review
3. Spelling - Test Fri.
4. Library - Bring books tomorrow!