In honor of Earth Day the students wrote letters to the Earth. Students were asked to include three things in their letters: 1) thank the Earth for something 2) ask a question 3) make a promise As usual, I am thrilled by the results and am eager to share the wonderful ideas the children came up with. I have uploaded the writing in a PDF file below:
"Tell Me a Dragon" is the title of a beautiful book by Jackie Morris. Using descriptive language the author manages to paint pictures with her words allowing the reader to visualize a variety of dragons. Each school year, I use the book as inspiration for one of my favourite writing activities. After listening to the story, students draw their dragon and talk about it with a peer. By the time the children finally put pencil to paper they have a clear vision of what their dragon looks like and they simply can't wait to write! Having invested so much time and effort in their dragons the students were so proud of their work I typed it up so that we could make a class book. A copy of each student's writing is below. We had an amazing guest in our room today! Mrs. Louise Milburn shared her aboriginal knowledge, stories and drumming with us. I can confidently say we were all mesmerized by Mrs. Milburn’s words and learned a great deal from her. Aside from learning about the significance of a healthy ecosystem and the lessons that can be gained from observing animals, we learned that our two responsibilities as people are to 1) to be life long learners and 2) to be helpful. We listened to Mrs. Milburn preform a ceremonial healing song and later spent time drawing the images we imagined in our minds. Interestingly, many students visualized natural elements such as trees and animals. I was most struck by the gentle calm that washed over the students as they lay listening to the song. Before leaving, Mrs. Milburn guided the children in a song that they each drummed and sang along with. It was a day we wont soon forget! We are all grateful Mrs. Milburn visited our class!
Mrs. Beckner and I continued our inquiry into reading instruction this week with three days of planning, co-teaching and reflecting on how we can best advance the young readers in Division 11. Knowing that what matters most to young readers is lots of practice we set out three goals for our students:
1) Understand and articulate why it's important to read 2) Become voracious readers 3) Practice maintaining focus while reading independently We achieved our goals through brainstorming, guided practice, goal setting, demonstrations/modeling, independent practice, and reflection. Mrs. Beckner started us off by reading Todd Parr's book "Reading Makes You Feel Good". Next we defined voracious reading and brainstormed what it looks like, sounds like and feels like to be a voracious reader. We followed this up by brainstorming why it is important to read everyday and what voracious readers think about while they read. The ideas that the children generated were recorded on a chart for us to revisit as needed (see below). In the centre of the chart we placed an image of Matilda from Roald Dahl's book of the same name. I am currently reading this novel aloud to the class and the students were able to connect to the character who is a voracious reader. To help the identify voracious reading traits in themselves we pulled out the iPads (thanks Learning Initiatives for lending them to us) and paired the students up to take pictures of each other and to annotate the pictures using Skitch. Students drew thinking bubbles and hearts on their pictures to illustrate what they were thinking and feeling while they read. They also added arrows to label the traits of a voracious reader. Each day there was plenty of time to practice voracious reading and to set personal goals to become skilled at focused, sustained reading. The students talked about their goals with partners and reflected on their progress as a group.
We were all pretty excited about the creation of the movie! Knowing that the movie would be shared with younger students in our school helped the students see themselves as leaders but also identify the importance of being a reader.
Below is a condensed version of the movie. You can see the full-length version here.
One of the things Mrs. Beckner and I were both impressed by was how quickly the students began to genuinely see themselves as voracious readers! It's a gift to see children transform into readers month by month and I look forward to seeing where this voracious reading will take them. We are both extremely grateful to be able to work with such a wonderful class of young readers and thank all the parents for the home support that makes such growth possible!
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Ms. Shawna WoodPassionate about teaching, learning, inclusion and kindness. Archives
August 2019
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