Three Weeks of Catching Up!

Typically, I devote my Saturday mornings to coffee drinking, Food Networking watching, and blogging about our week at school. The last couple of weekends have been so busy that my routine had to be set aside for things like weddings and antique shopping with family. And as much as I'd like to think I have time at school to write, that only exists in my dreams.

So, here I sit, ready to write about the last three weeks. Well, two weeks mostly, as I was gone three days this past week, so there's not a lot to tell. I'll do my best to recap the happenings of those three weeks.

Kindergarten students read three more wordless books, then began an author/illustrator study of Lauren Castillo as part of the Global Read Aloud. I am hoping that each of our kindergarten classes will be able to Skype with another class from around the country in the next two weeks.          
         
                                                                                        

First graders have been learning about poems in class, so we've been reading some poems during library class. The first time, we talked about how poems often use words that appeal to the five senses. We read a poem about popcorn, then wrote our own. Of course, we enjoyed a popcorn snack after looking, smelling, touching, tasting, and hearing it. 

We've also been reading some poems from some popular poetry books! 

 

And here's a quick poetry rap we did reading a sight word poem about sweets!

Second grade students worked on retelling the beginning, middle, and end of a story, which I highlighted in my last post. They have also been working on asking questions before, during, and after reading. Asking good questions about what we're reading really increases comprehension. We talked about how questions start with who, what, where, when, why, how, is, or are. To practice the skill we read two of my all-time favorite books--Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and Sam and Dave Dig a Hole. We watched Sylvester on BookFlix and read the physical version of Sam and Dave. I love watching and hearing kids listen to both of these stories. They both also have really great opportunities to ask questions. 

 

Third graders spent one more week determining characteristics of personal narratives. They read a book with a partner and looked for the elements that we had discussed, then they recorded their findings in our chart.

The last two weeks we have been working on inferencing. Inferencing is kind of a hard skill to teach/learn, because typically we do it without even thinking about it. The kids have been working on making inferences in class based on text evidence, but in library we've been reading wordless books and making inferences with those. The first book we read together was Sector 7. I actually took a picture of each page of the book and projected it. The pictures are very detailed and would have been hard to see, otherwise. 

This week, students worked with a partner to read through a wordless book and made inferences using the pictures. They recorded their inferences by describing the picture and telling the inference. They did a really great job, despite this being a hard task. It requires some metacognition to break apart the thinking that goes on when reading.

Fourth graders are wrapping up their Bloxels story retell projects. Hopefully I will figure out how to share out the games soon! 

Whew, that was a really fast recap of three whole weeks...next time, I'll do better to keep up!