Students in 6F started their day by writing in their writers' notebooks. I put a prompt on the board and students can choose to use it, or write about something else. Mr. Alberici has been doing morning announcements this week. You should ask your child about it: he's quite comical!
In reading this morning, we started with read aloud and discussion. I'm noticing that students are settling into the routine a bit more. I expect them to be sitting and listening during read aloud as well as contributing to the conversation. This includes listening to one another and adding to others 'comments. I quite often stop during read aloud to talk about different things. With this particular book, we are doing a lot of inferring, predicting, and synthesis. Students are reacting emotionally as well. This part of class is one of my favorites because of the rich discussion that takes place.
I collected reading logs and handed out new ones. These are due on 10/12. I also handed out an activity called Understanding Character. Since we are focusing so much on character development in this unit, I'm asking students, using their Celebrate our Differences book, to list character traits of the main character in their books. Then, they need to go back into the book to find passages that prove each trait. For example, Angus in the read aloud book is an animal lover. The author does not come right out and say this, but we can make that inference based on a few scenes in the book. We found those 2 scenes and used them on this paper. I did that as an example. I'm asking students to do this with the book they are reading. This is due Friday.
Some students met in groups today (Mango Shaped Space with me and Firegirl with Mrs. Bewersdorf). Others Read to Self or Responded to Reading during workshop time.
During writing, we practiced a strategy called The Rule of Thoughts and Feelings. Students worked on inserting thoughts and feelings into someone else's writing. Tomorrow we will practice with our own writing.
6S science worked on the shoebox procedures. They had the same lesson as 6F did yesterday (see the blog from yesterday for that explanation).
We ended our day playing Yahtzee with our 4th grade buddies. Fun!
