Petitions

Our petitions have been a popular choice during writing time lately! The kids have been writing their petitions, the reason why it should happen and then going around and collecting signatures.  It's a great opportunity to practice speaking to different people and reading our own writing.  

We also have a great song about taking care of pets that a student wrote!  She made a book out of it later and drew pictures for all the different animals to take care of. 

Persuasive Writing

We've been working hard on beginning our persuasive writing unit and it's going great! I love Lucy Calkins' writing units, they are set up to make writing so much fun and to help the students feel excited and empowered to write. 

 In our persuasive unit we talk about three steps:

1. See a problem

2. Think

3. Write

Today we added different ways to write and I taught them that we can write letters, signs, petitions, songs or lists to convince people about something.  The petitions were a big hit today, I love seeing them buzz around with new ideas. 

Some things we've been writing about are:

-not running the hallways

-longer recess

-shorter PE for middle school so we can use the field more ;)

-taking good care of pets

                                                

Board Books

 

How to Grow a Seed 

Get a pot or can. First you get some dirt. 

Next, you get some seeds. Step 4, poke holes in the dirt. 

Step 5, put some seeds in the dirt. Get some dirt and spread the dirt over the seeds. 

Water 5 times a week. Can you please not step on it? 

You did it! 

  

The Search for the Dragons

Pixie said to her mom, when can I look for the lost dragons?

Her mom said, you will need this.  I do not need all this stuff said Pixie.

So Pixie set off to the forest.  Pixie gasped, the dragon!

She went home to show her mom. 

Mom! Mom! Look! Look! The dragon egg. 

The End of our True Stories

We finished up our unit on true stories last week and I am so amazed at the progress the class made. This is always one of my favorite units because it happens in the middle of the year when the students start becoming more independent and really understanding sentences and parts of a story.  They continue to amaze me!

Here are a couple books to get a peek at our work.  I LOVE their stories.  These are totally independent too, I come around and conference individually with students during this time to set goals and talk about their writing.  They sound out and create stories all on their own after we meet as a group and learn a new skill or strategy to try.

"Football"

I was watching the Super Bowl. 

Touchdown Panthers!

I felt crazy.

Hawaii

I am at the beach.

We went to the beach.

Finally we got to Grandpa and Nana's.

"I Was Bowling"

I felt silly. I was going bowling. 

I knocked down the pins.

I felt happy.

"Clothes"

It is hard to get dressed. 

Shirts are hard to get on. 

Jeans are hard to get on.

I felt like I wanted to get on my clothes. 

Writing Partners

We have started a new challenge in writing...making our writing not only easy for us to read, but easy for our friends to read too.  We will start a new tradition of ending each writing session by coming to the carpet and sharing our writing from the day with our partner.  Our partner will read our story and give us a thumbs up if it's easy to read or a muscle flex if it needs some more work.  They did a great job today!

And a great -ing crown picture from last week! 

More Scrolls

I promised each student that I would publish a picture of their scroll when it became taller than they were, here are some more! 

In writing, we just celebrate the end of our second unit which was telling true stories.  We will do lots of gingerbread man writing activities this month and launch into our narrative storytelling unit after break.

Writing Lesson

We had a half day today, so it was the perfect day to bring my dog Wrigley to meet the class for the first time.  Wrigley has been coming to Brighton to visit since she was a puppy and LOVES kids.  We took the opportunity to teach Wrigley how to write true stories in our writing lesson ;)

All About Owls

We've been also learning....

The different noises that owl species make.

 We got to learn a new poem:

5 Little Owls

Five little owls learning to say, who

They flapped their wings and then said, shoe

Momma owl cried, no, no, not shoe!

Please oh please say, who who who!

Then, we got to make a book to show all the new things we learned about owls.  Our predictable sentences start with "Owls are _________ ."