Hey there! Welcome to Prodigious in Primary's week in review. Once a week I plan to do a blog post discussing some of the learning that has gone on in our classroom.
While
we are still adjusting to the procedures and routines of the classroom,
we got a lot in! In reading we focused on visualizing and sequence of
events, in math we launched number talks, and in writing we published
our first piece of the year.
Reading
This week in reading our reading comprehension focus is visualizing, which is one of my favorite things to teach.
To
practice visualizing we began like we begin all things in our
classroom...with an anchor chart! We talked about how good readers
visualize, or construct mental images, as they read a text. After I
modeled the strategy using an excerpt from a Junie B. Jones book, the
students got to practice visualizing on their own.
My
Neighbor's Dog is Purple is a great poem to use to begin this unit. Not
only is it very simple and fun, but it also shows readers that mental
images can change as you read.
I
had them close their eyes as I read the poem. After I read it I gave
them each a copy of the poem and their job was to highlight the words
that helped them to visualize (adjectives) and to draw their "mental
picture" in the sunglasses template. Once they drew what they visualized
in the poem, I had them color in their faces.
My students LOVED this introductory activity to visualizing. Beginning with a simple poem like this was helpful as we ventured into stories that required them to use their schema and background knowledge to create an image. Click here to get a free template of the activity with the poem!
This week in reading we also practiced how to go back to in the text to find evidence to support our answers to comprehension questions. Since I am lucky enough to be in a 1:1 classroom, we got to do this on our computers!
Math
This week in math we are finishing up our unit on 2- digit subtraction with regrouping.
I'm super excited because this week we also started doing number talks as a warmup for math. Currently we are working on the "making a 10" strategy. I want to give a huge shout out to our amazing Math Coach Kerri for modeling this for me!
Basically, number talks are short (5-15 min.) discussions among a teacher and students about how to solve a particular mental math problem. The focus is not on the correct answer, but on all the possible methods and strategies of finding the answer. Throughout the week, each student has a chance to explain their method.
(More to come on this in an upcoming blog post!)
Writing
Creating and cultivating a positive classroom community is very important to myself as an educator. One of the ways I have tried to accomplish this in our classroom is by having student see themselves (and their peers) in a positive light through an writing activity we called "The Best Part of Me."
We used the book The Best Part of Me by Wendy Ewald as our mentor text. This book is a collection of photographs and responses from children when asked "what is the best part of you?" To start, we read some of the stories other children wrote in the book, brainstormed possible body parts, and then each student created a word web of why that part was their best part. From there we took it through the writing process. We drafted, revised with a peer, edited, published, and shared our writing!
There you have it! That's a snapshot of what happened in our classroom this week. Be on the look out for more posts like these as well as a post all about Morning Meeting.
Happy teaching,
Brennan
