The students have started their animal research for their reports and for our upcoming Reading Restaurant. We are so excited to learn about oceans and its wonderful creatures together. This week, the students chose an animal they wished to study. They also wrote their introductions to their reports, discussing why they chose that particular animal. Additionally, the students included three "I wonder Questions", questions they have regarding their animal, its characteristics or specific habitat. The reasoning was wonderful and our introductions are fabulous. We cannot wait to share with you. After the students had finished their introductions, we looked at pictures of our chosen animals. We learned how to use our words to describe what the animals looked like. We learned how important it is to be specific with words and we also learned that adjectives certainly come in handy when we want to convey an idea. Soon, we will share our descriptions with each other and try to draw and guess which animal our partner tried to describe. This is a very fun activity to do at home too with anything, not just ocean animals. Challenge each other to describe a "Mystery Object" which the other person has to guess or draw and see who can provide the most accurate descriptions! Next week, the students will learn how to read informational texts and re-voice the information into their own words before including it in their reports. Patti Tursi, our school ELL teacher, will be joining our class and we will co-teach many writing classes together. We are very fortunate to have her expertise shared with us all. Thank you, Patti!
In preparation for this upcoming unit, the students have continued their work on "Stop & Jot" as they read. We started sharing our thoughts publicly earlier this week when we created a common place where we can share the author's main idea in a book or in a particular passage. Here is a picture of our "Posting the Main Idea" poster for our classroom. Ask your child to explain why we do this and why it is important to think about the main idea in a book.
I hope you all received the email regarding our upcoming team-wide Reading Restaurant. It is scheduled for May 17th, so please save the date early so you can come and celebrate your child's writing and learning this year. Our theme this year is "The Ocean".
A Reading Restaurant is a pretend restaurant in our classroom that serves up stories that the students have created throughout the year. The students act as the waiters and waitresses and we even create a pretend kitchen in the classroom from which the various menu choices are offered from. We will have a restaurant name and the menu usually consists of appetizers, main courses and dessert; all different genres of writing. We are excited to prepare for this upcoming celebration. Thank you for saving May 17th for us on Team Harmony.
As we decorate our classroom in an ocean theme, some students have started to bring in ocean stuffed animals for us to hang up. It is greatly appreciated and we love the animals. It is completely voluntary, but please know that if your child brings in an animal it will only be on display and cannot be played with. It also will stay in the classroom until after the Reading Restaurant. Thank you so much for your support and enthusiasm.
I hope you have a great rest of the week and weekend.
Maria
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