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!

What are we up to?

Well...
In Reading Workshop we are working in a brand new unit called "Reading Across Genres". The students are in book clubs as they were in the nonfiction unit, but this time they are reading both fiction and nonfiction books around one topic. Some of our "clubs" are The Moon, Knights/Castles, and China. The students are working on finding factual information in fictional books, encountering nontruths and looking through nonfiction to get accurate information, as well as realizing they can learn information from fictional books. Some of our next lessons will involve vocabulary related to the topic. We will continue with this unit until after vacation. The students will probably choose one other topic after vacation.

In Writing Workshop we are working on Persuasive Letter writing. The students are learning strategies for writing a strong piece of persuasive writing. I am so pleased with their progress, they are really working hard and putting a lot of thought into their reasons! The things that they are trying to persuade about are priceless! I will have some pictures up soon.

In Math we are working on finding differences, problem solving, place value and much more. The students have learned some new games such as "The Difference Game" and "Base Ten Exchange". I try to do a Math Workshop approach once or twice a week on my longer days which allows me to meet with small groups during this time.

In Science we are working on a unit on Plants. We charted our schema and put together our lima bean greenhouses. Those will stay up all week and the students will observe any changes each morning and write them down in their observation journal. We will learn about the parts of a plant and do a few fun activities.

Our class could use some of the following if you are able: skinny dry erase markers, glue sticks, colored cardstock (8x11), and did I mention glue sticks? :) We use these almost daily!

Thank you for stopping by!