After reading The Tiger Rising as a whole class, we decided to form our own book clubs. I put the kids in groups, and each book club came up with their own name and constitution. We have the Frazier Five, The Golden Eclipse Dragons, The Kewlios, The Chalkers, and the Five Star Readers. After deciding this information, I showed each club 3-4 books that I thought would be "just-right" for them to read. Each club selected a book and created a reading assignment for themselves (how many chapters to read and how to respond in their journals). We alternate between reading days and discussion days. I wish you could hear the wonderful discussions our kids are having. By listening to each other's ideas, building on different perspectives, and proving their ideas in the text, our kids are become deeper and stronger readers and thinkers. I'm really proud of them. This past Friday was a discussion day, and here are a few pictures of our kids participating in their discussions...
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Book Clubs
Non-Fiction Fridays
I love Friday mornings. No assignments to copy down. No morning work. Everyone has a happy feeling because it's the end of another week. On some Fridays, we have "Non-Fiction Friday." Kids grab an interesting non-fiction book or magazine and just enjoy reading. Some kids read with a friend, some like reading independently. On this particular Friday morning, there was a big clump of kids all on the carpet. They were all sharing, smiling, and laughing with each other as they read. It was fun to watch. Here are some pictures from our morning together...
How Much Snow?
We were lucky to get some snow this school year - it's been a long time since we've had some March snow. With two snow days and a two hour delay, I was WAY behind on my lesson plans. When we came back to school that Wednesday, I was ready to jump back in the curriculum. But...as the kids walked in and greeted each other, there was so much talk about snow. We shared our experiences about the snow and gave descriptions of what it was like at each of our houses. There was a lot of talk about how much snow we received. So, I asked each child to make an estimate about the amount of snow fall at their house (we got out our rulers and reviewed inches), and everyone recorded their data on a post-it note. We put all our data on a line plot and analyzed it. We noticed lots of interesting trends (which we charted)! In order to show our results in different ways, teams of students create bar graphs, pie graphs, and pictographs. Below are some pictures of our work...
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Studycast - Social Studies Chapter 10
Click here to listen to the studycast for Chapter 10. You can download the audio file by right-clicking on the link and choosing "Save target as..." The study guide came home on Wednesday, March 25th, and the test is on Tuesday, March 31st. If you need an extra copy of the study guide, click here. You can download the study guide from our class website's homework page.
If you have any questions about the material, just send me an email or leave a comment below this post. I'd love to hear from you!
Tiger Rising Projects
I mentioned in an earlier post how our kids created projects based on what they learned from reading The Tiger Rising. The students created all kinds of projects: readers' theaters from the important scenes, commercials, new front and back cover of the book, and book recommendations. For the majority of our students, I was very pleased with the effort and creativity they put forth into the project. Here are a few pictures of our kids creating their projects...
Jo'nae, Alaina, and Julian are studying other book recommendations in order to write their own. 
Cameron, Coco, and Andrea are creating a new front and back cover for the book.
Richie had to measure the poster board in order to cut it in half - isn't it amazing how we use math all the time?!
Exploring Area
We had a fun time exploring area last week. We used one inch and three inch squares to find the area of two dimensional shapes around our classroom. Our kids quickly found out that you don't have to cover the entire shape to find the area. Rebekah figured out that you could lay out your squares on one row, and then find out how many squares would go into each row. Lots of our students began using multiplication to help them find their answers. Here are some pictures of the kids at work.
Alex and Rebekah had to work together to find the area of a cinder block face.
You can see how Coco has recorded her findings in her math notebook.
Preparing for Book Clubs
It's been a long time since I've posted...sorry about that. With ITBS testing, the PASS writing test, MAPs testing, and the Spring Production, life in Room 241 has been a little crazy. I'm hoping that these next few weeks will bring us a little bit of normalcy.
Here are a few pictures of the kids reading and responding in their book club journals. As a class, we read The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo. I started off reading the first ten chapters aloud, demonstrating how I would respond in my own journal. For the second week, the kids worked with a partner to read and respond. We also began holding small book club discussions to get a feel for how readers discuss books. By the third week, students were reading independently and holding their own book club discussions about the book. After we finished reading, we reflected about what makes a great book club discussion (we posted our ideas on a chart hanging up in our room), and we also created projects to show the class what we had learned.
Students are now in their own book clubs, reading a book they selected as a group. We're about halfway through the process, and I'm extremely proud of the way they're reading, responding, and digging deep into a text. If you could listen in to some of these conversations, you would be amazed at the thought and deep insight our kids are able to bring out of their books. Hopefully, I'll have some more posts to keep you updated on our progress. 
Coco and Nakia are reading and responding.
Anne and Caitlyn are capturing their thoughts in their response journals. 
