Plants, Literacy Centers, Reading and Writing Workshop

Our class has been learning about plants this week in Science. We are observing our lima bean seeds each morning and recording what we notice in our lima bean journals. Today we labeled the parts of a plant in our science notebooks and then made a craft activity to go along with it.

 

Here are a few pictures of some literacy center work!

 

Using story cubes to identify character, problem and setting and then write a story to go along with those elements!

 

 



Reading and listening to stories at our own personal reading level and answering corresponding comprehension questions on the computers. The kids love this!

Working on some activities such as building long e words, sorting words, counting syllables in words, and putting words in ABC order at the Word Work center.

 

 

Reading our leveled readers and interest books from our book bags at the Read to Self center!

 

Here are some pictures of what we are working on in Reader's Workshop including an anchor chart we used to refer to for discussion when comparing and contrasting books in our book clubs! We have also been adding to ongoing "Vocabulary Word Banks" for important words related to our topics. The students identify words that they think are important to know when learning about their topic, write the word, and illustrate. Then we add it to the word bank. :)

 

 

 

 

Lastly, here are some pictures of students working hard at writing persuasive letters as well as sharing one of their favorites. They are doing such a great job! I am so impressed at how so many of them have moved beyond persuading people for things like toys and moving towards things that can help others!

Literacy Centers

During my literacy center time the students work in two different stations a day. So far we are working in the following stations: Read to Self, Word Work, Work on Writing, and Read to Someone.

In Read to Self the students read from their book bags. Their bags contain "just right books" (those that come home for homework) and interest books. The interest books are books that they have self selected from my classroom library that are not at their reading level. Many students use this opportunity to choose nonfiction books on animals or weather, etc. During this time they read in a quiet spot for about 20 minutes. Sometimes they will look for words in their books like word family words or sight words, but they are just reading independently here.


Work on Writing is the station that allows the students to write for different purposes. They can write lists, label pictures, write friendly letters (including the parts to a friendly letter), write stories on fun theme paper or respond to various writing prompts. In this station there is a set of colored drawers and each drawer has different kinds of paper to take depending on what they want to work on.



Word Work is a station where the students usually start off doing their sorts (Words Their Way). Then they can choose activities in the colored drawers to work on for the remaining time. They can read the room and find specific words (four letter words, words that begin with certain letters, etc), build sight words with magnetic letters, use dry erase boards to write words/sentences, do sentence scrambles, stamp sight words, play word games, rainbow word wall writing, and more. These drawers will change out throughout the year.



Read to Someone is a station that includes big books. In this station the children read to/with buddies and look for and highlight sight words or word family words. They practice choral reading together, building fluency.

Happy Birthday to Madison on Sunday 10/30!!!