I talked with my homeroom today about the schedule on Thursday. Hopefully, you all know that Thursday is our first C-Time for the district. This is a time that teachers are collaberating in the beginning of the school day. Students have one of two options for the beginning of this day. The first option is that they come to school for an 8:55 start. They would have to be dropped off by someone (not a bus) at this time or walk or bike to school. The second option is that students come to school for the regular time and participate in some volunteer-run activities for that first hour that teachers are in meetings. Buses are running at normal times that morning. I need to know from your child what his/her plans are for the C-Time on Thursday. Please talk about it at home and I will ask my homeroom tomorrow morning. Thank you!
We started with reading class today. Read aloud was packed full of discussion about metaphors, inferences and prejudism - heavy stuff! This book is so amazing and sparks such fabulous discussion! After read aloud, I handed out the requirements for the Celebrate Our Differences unit. We are adding Respond to Reading as an option during Reading Workshop time in the class. For this unit, I have set up an in-house blog/wiki for the students to respond to their reading of these books. The blog is only accessible when children are at Maple Street. It is not one that you can get to on the internet. Each week, students are responsible for gettting on the blog and writing a paragraph (5 to 10 sentence) response about the reading done that week. I have guiding questions that are to be addressed each week. Students will be graded on these entries according to the rubric that I gave them today. We will go over that rubric tomorrow. I'm so excited to try this process out! It's like a virtual book club. Students will be able to read each other's responses and comment back each time they get on the blog. Please let me know if you have any questions. Students do not need to do anything for this entry at home unless they want to plan it out. My suggestion was for them to look at the questions that will be addressed in the week's entry and be thinking about that as they are reading.
In writing today, we looked at two stories and discussed the difference between them. Both stories are about summer vacation trips, but one has much more detail than the other. The point is for students to write like the story with more detail so we have a picture in our minds as we listen. I also discussed the beginning stages of the writing process and what is expected for this published piece of writing. I am asking students to write their rough drafts on filler paper, skipping lines to make room for revision. We worked on these today.
Finally, in 6S science, we did the same thing as 6F did yesterday. Please see yesterday's blog for that.
We met with our buddies in Mrs. Roberts' class today. We did some logic problems in cooperative groups. So fun!
