Author's Chair

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone is enjoying spending time with their families and taking time to give thanks for our many blessings in life.

This past week, our class has been busy becoming authors. We have been writing stories about what we like to do. The students started with a word web to organize their thoughts and then put their ideas into sentences. When the students were finished writing the sentences, they checked for capitals and punctuation, and then made sure all the word wall words were spelled correctly. I then asked them to pick two words for me to help them spell that were not on the word wall. When students were finished editing and conferencing with me, they turned in their papers to be published. We have a 5th grade student that is the publisher. Kelsey types up the story and we bind it together. The book is then returned to the student to illustrate it. When this entire process is completed, the student get to do author's chair to share their published story. There are a few more stories that are being illustrated and many more that are being published. This does take time. I do ask the students to be patient because an author and publisher do not publish a story overnight. It is a process that takes time.

In this video, Kenzie shares her story--What I Like--during author's chair. Please continue to check the blog because other students are in the publishing process. I do not require students to publish. This is a choice in my room. Everyone writes during writing time, but not every child will get through this process. Every student works at writing at where they are at developmentally. I will conference with each student and encourage them to work towards a published story. If you do not see your students story on the blog please encourage them to publish.

4 In-a-Row

The month of November is going by fast. Next week is a short week and the students get out for the Thanksgiving holiday at 12:00 on Tuesday. I can't believe we are so close to holiday season!

We will be very busy over the next month learning many math games to help us with our addition and subtraction facts, writing stories and publishing them as authors, and learning many Christmas songs and poems. I plan on videoing the students playing math games, reading their stories to the class and performing the Christmas songs and poems. Continue to check out our blog so that you can keep up with all the learning and fun activities going on in our room!

In math, our class has moved on to subtraction. The students are learning about comparing numbers to find the difference and about words that tell us to subtract (ie. how many many more than, how many are left, how many are not). Students are learning that subtracting is the opposite of addition--start with the whole and take away part and the other part is left.

In the video, Diago and Kenzie play 4 In-a-Row. Watch out Kenzie! Diago knows how to block!