Wrapping Up

We will be wrapping up our Kevin Henkes author study over the next week with some of his "non-mouse" themed books.  To culminate reading the last of Henkes' mouse books, we played "Kevin Henkes Mouse Jeopardy" on Friday--boys vs. girls.  Students picked a category and dollar amount and answered questions about what we have been reading thus far.  Questions required students to really have been paying attention to details both explicit and inferred in the stories.  It was a close race with the boys just beating the girls by a narrow margin.  What I was most proud of was the good sportsmanship displayed by both teams, who cheered for one another and congratulated each other for their work.  The members of the winning team each received two tickets.  The girls settled for the consolation prize:  one ticket each.  Best of all, everyone had a great time playing and assured me that they would like to play again!

Students have been doing an excellent job of incorporating the mini lesson I have been teaching about a particular reading strategy or convention into their own independent reading in their just right books.  We have been learning about how to "talk to books" and constantly be thinking about our reading by making connections, asking questions, making predictions, and noticing details that help us better understand and feel closer to the our books and the characters in them.  After our mini-lesson, students spend about 20 minutes reading independently and using sticky notes to highlight pages where they have connected their thinking with our learning in the mini lesson.  As students read, I conference with them and talk to them about what they are discovering in their reading.  Then, students will often fill out a graphic organizer to gather their thoughts, and eventually apply those organized thoughts into a  fully expressed written extension.  Since each student is writing about the book that he/she has been reading at his/her level, I get a good indication of how to assess student strengths and weaknesses, and the kids are able to work at a level that helps them attain their personal best without the work being too easy or too difficult.

This week, we will talk about noticing tone and mood in two of Kevin Henkes' stories:  Old Bear and Little Kitten's Full Moon.  As students read their own just right books, I will be conferencing with them to discuss how they have applied what we learned to their own thinking about their reading.  Later, students will create watercolor paintings in the style of Kevin Henkes in Old Bear and will use similes and metaphors to create visual imagery as Henkes does in Little Kitten.

In addition to our author study, we are wrapping up our unit on poetry in Writer's Workshop.  Students will be choosing one poem to publish, and I will type them up to send home.

We've wrapped up the DRA's and all but one end-of-unit reading assessment.  We also have only one math post test left until the end of the year.  So, we'll be doing a lot of reviewing of concepts that, based on previous assessments, I have determined students need more support on.  We will review time to the quarter and half hour (this is a tough one for nearly everyone), fractions, and dividing numbers into equal parts.

In our science study of insects, we were actually able to watch one of our caterpillars split his skin, shed it, and form a chrysalis around himself.  In all the years I have been hatching butterflies, I have never seen this happen (it occurs very quickly), so it was so cool for the students to be able to watch the process.  All the other six caterpillars are now in the pupa stage inside their chyrsali.  We expect we might have a couple of butterflies when we come back to school on Monday.  When the butterflies hatch, students may bring in flowers from home (with permission, of course) so the butterflies will have some food!

Reminders:

• Wednesday is Field Day.  It is supposed to be HOT!  We will be outside ALL day.  Please make sure your child is dressed in appropriate clothing (shorts, tee shirts, sneakers).  Our class colors are green and white.  Please see the note that went home in your child's folder regarding which color he/she should wear.

• Please check your child's folder daily so you won't miss important notices.  Also, I will be sending home lots of papers that have accumulated over the year (mostly written work that I have saved to use in my own assessments), so expect to see a lot of paper over the next couple of weeks!

• Friday is a 1/2 day!  No school Monday in observance of Memorial Day!

Have a Great Week!