Mack

Today in The One and Only Ivan we got to see our first picture of the man in charge of the Exit 8 Big Top Mall.  The class looked confused at the man they saw on the page.  I was excited that the class was confused because it meant they had all been visualizing.  We had been picturing Mack in our head as we were reading the book and the picture we saw did not match what we had imagined.

We are going to continue to talk about visualizations this week as we read.  In fact the students started to search for descriptive parts today as they read Charlotte's Web.  When the students find these descriptive parts they are going to copy them down and then draw me a picture of what they are picturing in their head.

I love this thinking strategy.  Visualizing is what finally made reading fun for me.  I loved the idea of turning the book I was reading into a movie in my head.  I became a mini-director.  I am hoping as we continue to talk about visualizing the rest of the week the students will see how it can make reading more enjoyable.

We also talked today about how we use schema to visualize.  To prove the point I had the class describe to me what we would see and hear during gym class if they were playing Caveman Dodgeball.  The class was able to tell me I would hear, "the squeak of gym shoes" or see "colorful dodge balls skipping across the shining gym floor."  Then I asked the class describe to me what my father looked like.  The class struggled.  They lacked schema to describe my father but had plenty for gym class.

Schema is such an important part of reading.  The background knowledge of readers allows them to be more familiar with ideas in texts but it also allows for deeper understanding as students use schema to make inferences and to visualize.  

I hope you are all off to a great start this week.  If you are checking this late on Monday night, do not forget that tomorrow is Pink Day.  It is also the Reds vs. Pirates:)

Contrasts and Contradictions

One of the signposts that we have been discussing besides "The Aha Moment" is called "Contrasts and Contradictions."  I know a bit of a crazy name for fourth graders but I actually think this signpost is one of the most common and easiest to find in books.  The Contrasts and Contradiction signpost is found when a character does or says something that is completely opposite (contradicts) what the character has been saying or doing all along.

Today in The One and Only Ivan, Ivan contradicted his previous behavior.  In the book he has told us before that he never gets angry, but today he got angry.  When you find a Contrast and Contradiction signpost the reader is supposed to stop and ask themselves: Why is the character doing that?

This is exactly what we did we took time to think about why Ivan got mad.  The class was able to dig deeper into this important moment of the book.  They realized that Ivan was frustrated that all his work was for nothing, but more importantly they realized he was angry because he was not going to keep his promise to Stella.  If you want you could talk to our students about the moment that Ivan got angry.  Hopefully they can tell you all about this moment.

These signposts are going to be something that we discuss all year long.  Hopefully after being introduced to these signposts and seeing me model how I use the signposts when I read aloud the students will feel more comfortable using them in their reading.

We also spent part of today looking at some art.  As we looked at the art we reviewed the metacognition thinking strategy and talked about inferences.  Here is the painting that we looked at today.

Students told me what they saw in the painting, what they noticed, and what they inferred as they looked at the painting.  One of my favorite inferences was that there was only one person in the apartment.  When I asked this student to explain his evidence he said, "there is only one car parked outside."  Brilliant!  I was thinking he just saw the one light in the building, but his evidence is so much more advanced.  

Next week we are going to start talking about our next thinking stem visualizing.  I love some of the lessons that go with the idea of picturing what you read.  

I cannot believe tomorrow is Friday.  I also cannot believe that we are sending midterms home tomorrow.  Hope you are all having a great week.

Finding Connections

As we keep reading The One and Only Ivan and Charlotte's Web more and more connections between the two books keep appearing.  Today we saw how in both books animal characters were trying to use human words to save another character.  I really have found a deeper appreciation for the two books as I have seen some of the similarities.

Students are working on comparing and contrasting the two books this week in their reader's notebook. It has been fun to see the comparisons that the students have found that I have not even thought of I have been reading.  I cannot wait to see how the two books work together as we keep reading.  I think we are still on pace to finish Charlotte's Web by next Friday.  I think this might be right around the time when we finish The One and Only Ivan.

We also kept working on inferences today.  We used to poems from Georgia Heard's book Creatures of the Earth, Sea, and Sky.  Both the poems were about animals.  I had cut out the names of the animals which forced us to infer the animals in the poems.  I was impressed again with the evidence that the students were using to support their inferences.  Tomorrow we are going to finish up talking about inferences (although we will constantly be reminding students to use these thinking strategies throughout the year) by looking at some art work and inferring what see in the paintings.

The class has also been working on creating their first writing projects.  Some students are writing poems, others are writing comic books, others are writing ABC Books, and some are writing personal narratives.  I love seeing how the students work through the writing process.

I will be collecting the students first draft tomorrow and giving the students comments on their project.  I love to comment on the writing during the writing process.  When I was a student teachers always gave me comments at the end of my work and too often at that point it was too late.  By collecting the writing and making comments students will be able to figure out exactly what I want them to work on for their final draft.  After I collect the first drafts we will take a week break from the writing project.  During that week we are going to be looking at some of my favorite books to figure out what the author's are doing in their books that we could borrow.

Hope you are enjoying your Wednesday.

How It's Made

Today we looked at our second How it's Made video.  When we watch these videos we are thinking about the land, the labor and the capital that are being used to make the products.  The video we watched today was on how baseballs are made.  I have to admit it was rather interesting.

The class had already watched a video on how bicycle seats are made.  When we watch the videos the class throws their hands in the air and shakes them when they see an example of land, labor or capital.  We are going to keep talking about economics the rest of the week and discuss how and why budgets are made (a lesson I wish I had learned in fourth grade).

We are also took our first MAP assessment today.  You should have received a letter explaining these assessments in the Friday Folder.  This is a new type of assessment that our district is using to measure student growth.  The assessment was given on a computer in our computer lab.  The class took the reading assessment today and will take the math and language assessment over the next two weeks. 

I thought the class did an amazing job of working hard on the assessment.  We will be sharing these results with these assessments as soon as they are made available to us.  If you have any questions about the assessment, please feel free to call and ask.

Assessments not the most interesting blog post of our year.  Hope you are having a great week.

Flotsam

Today we read one of my favorite picture books Flotsam.

This amazing book is written by David Wiesner and you can see its lovely Caldecott Medal on the cover.  The book is a wordless picture book that tells the story of an amazing underwater camera.  We used this book to show how students use details from the text and their schema to help them make inferences.  

I keep telling the students that to me the most important part of an inference is the evidence that the students use to make the inference.  I even think the evidence is more important than the inference itself.  Today I really started to see some very sophisticated evidence being used to make inferences.  We were looking at facial reactions to make inferences.  We used our experiences at beaches to make inferences. I hope the students keep focusing on using evidence from the text along with their schema to make great inferences.

David Wiesner is an amazing author.  The next time you are at the library I suggest you grab some of his books.  My favorites include Tuesday, Sector 7 and Hurricane.  All these books are the wordless picture books that can really allow our students to make inferences.

As we keep reading the book Charlotte's Web, we keep seeing more and more ways that it connects to The One and Only Ivan.  The students have even started a compare and contrast page in their reader's notebook where they can find similarities and differences between the two books.  Today we all found one major similarity a promise.  You can ask about the two promises from the books.

Besides comparing and contrasting we are also focussing on looking for signposts as we read both books.  The idea for these signposts comes from the book Notice and Note.

One of the signposts that we have been talking about is the Aha Moment.  To me the Aha Moment is when a character finally figures something out or realizes something or decides something important.  In the book The One and Only Ivan, Ivan had a major Aha Moment when he realized that he was living inside a cage.  The whole book Ivan thought he lived in a domain but then one day he suddenly realized that it was a cage.  

The whole idea of these signposts it that you notice the signpost and then you stop and ask yourself a question.  The question we will be asking when we find an Aha Moment is...How might this change things?  In The One and Only Ivan we decided that Ivan would start to get mad and try to escape.  

I love these signposts.  I have started to search for them in my reading.  In almost every book I read I find at least one example of all the signposts.  When I stop and notice these signposts as I read, I find that I understand the book on such a deeper level.  I hope if you are reading a book you could search for the Aha Moment.  Also you can talk about Aha Moments that our students are finding in the books they are reading. 

It is extra innings and I am extra tired.  I hope you had a quick Monday.  

Thank You Pinterest

Today we continued to work on the thinking strategy of making inferences.  The lesson I taught today was stolen/borrowed from Pinterest.  We watched two Pixar shorts movies.  The first one was called Geri's Game.

As we watched we made an inference that the short was set in the fall.  You can see in this picture how the students might have made this inference.  The evidence was the leaves on the tree.  We mixed this evidence with our schema of what happens to trees in the fall and were able to make the inference that it was fall.  Then we watched another Pixar short called For the Birds.

I love these Pixar shorts and I think they are excellent for helping students understand the idea of making an inference. 

We also continued to read Charlotte's Web.  In class we have started to discuss the idea of signposts.  This idea of looking for signposts as we read comes from the book Notice and Note.

As we read Charlotte's Web I am going to be introducing the first three signposts to our students.  The authors of Notice and Note through their research have found six signposts that show up repeatedly in literature.  These signposts should make students stop and notice and note as they read.  This process should allow for a more in-depth reading of the text.  

We have already introduced two of the signposts.  The students have a bookmark to remind them of the signposts and we are creating posters around the room that remind students of the signposts and how to use them as they read.  Tomorrow I will take more time to explain the two signposts that we have already introduced. 

Hope you are all enjoying your week.

Shoe Detectives

Today we did an activity to introduce the class to the idea of making inferences.  Inferences are another of the thinking strategies that we will use throughout the year.  An inference to me is when you figure something out that is not clear by using evidence.  To show this idea I told the students that I had picked up a pair of shoes from a garage sale.  We made a T-Chart and the class told me things that they thought they knew about the person just from looking at the shoes.  On the right side of the T-Chart the class told me what evidence they used to make their inferences.

The class was able to figure out that the person who wore the shoes did not tie and untie his shoes when he took them off and put them on.  The evidence they used to make this inference was the shoes were permanently folded over in the back.  Another inference was that the person who wore the shoes mowed the grass wearing the shoes.  This time the evidence was the grass stains on the toe of the shoe. The class went on and on figuring things out about the shoes and supplying evidence for their inferences.

Then when it was time for read aloud and Charlotte's Web the class practiced making their own inferences.  When we were reading The One and Only Ivan the class was able to make an inference that gave us all a good laugh.  Inferences are a challenge but they also unlock parts of the book that are so important.  They can unlock funny jokes or important parts of the book that may go unnoticed if the reader is not inferring.  We will continue to work on inferences this week and into next week and then use them throughout the year.

Speaking of The One and Only Ivan I found this wonderful non-review of the book and thought I would share the link http://nerdybookclub.wordpress.com/2013/09/14/the-one-and-only-ivan-by-katherine-applegate-absolutely-not-reviewed-by-donalyn-miller/  The non-review comes from the Nerdy Book Club blog.  This is a great place to find books.  If you are looking for another place to find amazing books, you should check out the blog Heavy Medal.  This is my favorite blog over the next few months they will be reviewing and sharing and talking about books that they think will win the Newbery Medal.  http://blogs.slj.com/heavymedal/

Hope you are all having a quick week.  I cannot believe that it is already Wednesday.

Entrepreneurs Are...

In Social Studies we have been reading a book called One Hen.

We are using this book to begin our discussion about entrepreneurs.  The character in the book, Kojo, tells the story of how one small loan made a big difference in his life.  As we read the book we are creating a word web in our Social Studies interactive notebook.  The students have added words like risk, labor, wages. and loan to the web.  

We are also creating a list in our Social Studies interactive notebooks titled: Entrepreneurs Are....So far on the list we have added words like risk takers, disciplined, and in control.  We are going to continue to talk about how entrepreneurs gather land, labor and capital to create products or provide sources.  I hope the students are enjoying the story and learning about entrepreneurs.  There is a website http://onehen.org that you can visit for more information about the book and Kojo's story.

Our First Class Novel

Today we started to read our first class novel Charlotte's Web.  I am so excited to start this process.  I have not really taught a class novel in a long time so I am excited about trying something new.  I decided to come back and teach a class novel for a lot of different reasons, but the one I am most excited about is how it helps to create a community of readers.

I also picked the book Charlotte's Web for a lot of different reason but the one I am most excited about is how it relates to The One and Only Ivan.  The One and Only Ivan has been called the modern day Charlotte's Web in multiple reviews that I have read.  I cannot wait to see the class find connections between the two books as we read.

I know there might be concerns that some of you have about the class being asked to read the same book.  Some of you may be concerned that the book might pose too much of a challenge for some of our readers.  Others might be concerned that the exact opposite may be true for some of our readers.  I understand these concerns and just wanted to explain how we plan on dealing with these issues.

First to make the book more accessible to some readers we will have iTouch reading stations.  An iTouch station allows five readers to follow along in their book as I read the book aloud.  Today students started to practice using these iTouch listening stations.  We will continue to practice using this technology to make the book more accessible to our students.

The professional book where I got this idea to try a whole class novel was called Notice and Note.  In the book the authors talk about rigor.  Rigor is a new buzzword in education right now.  In the book the authors talk about rigor and compare it to weightlifting.  They say a lifter who tries to pick up too much weight is actually not doing rigorous work.  Just like asking a student to read a book that is too hard does not lead to rigorous work.  I agree with this statement completely and that is why we created the listening stations to allow students to access this book.

As a freshman I used to loathe going to the weight room during gym time.  If you have seen me, you know that weights are not my friend.  However I did like one exercise that we were asked to do in the weight room.  At times we would bench a small amount of weight as many times as we could until we hit the wall.  As a freshman lifting 40 pounds was not rigorous but trying to lift it 50 times would become rigorous.

We know for some students that Charlotte's Web may not be a challenge, but we will be challenging your students with what they do while they are reading.  Over the next few days I will be introducing you to some of the concepts that we will be talking about in class.  These ideas will allow the class to read Charlotte's Web more closely.  These techniques will be able to used while reading other books and hopefully they will challenge all of our students.

I cannot wait to keep going with the book.  I think many of you are familiar with this book and know it is a book that shows the power of literature.  I hope you become part of our reading community by talking with our students about the book.  You could even pick the book up yourself and reread the text.  I have been loving going back through the book as I read it into the iTouch.

Hope your Monday was quick.

I am From Poems

Today is one of my favorite days.  I always love this day each year that I teach.  Today the class got to write what I call I am From poems.  To start I had the class cut out two poems.  The first poem is called Where I'm From by George Ella Lyon.

I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening,
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush
the Dutch elm
whose long-gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.

I'm from fudge and eyeglasses,
          from Imogene and Alafair.
I'm from the know-it-alls
          and the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up! and Pipe down!
I'm from He restoreth my soul
          with a cottonball lamb
          and ten verses I can say myself.

I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
          to the auger,
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.

Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments--
snapped before I budded --
leaf-fall from the family tree.

I love this poem.  Then I show the class my version that was inspired by the George Ella Lyon poem.

I am From

I am from the dirt of a thousand ball fields

The sun stained asphalt of tennis court after tennis court

I am from the chlorine of countless swimming pools

The grass stains of all the soccer parks

I am from city after city

state after state

country after country

finally settling down to find a home

I am from a teacher

and a pilot,

I'm from the plains of Oklahoma mixed

with the sun of Florida

I am from a pair made for

each other

I am from a mother who taught

who always had the food on the table

who woke before the sun to get me to morning practice

I am from a father who never

missed a point, a game, a set, a match

who always made the time

in the middle of a busy schedule

I am from the streets of the suburbs

flash-light tag, bikes with baseball cards in the spokes and backyard football

I am from the heart of it all

the Icky Shuffle, the wire to wire Reds, and hit number 4,192

I am from a house of quiet

but always surrounded with love

I am from the shade of the Black Oak

with a view where the Deer Run

After looking at the two poems and discussing what we notice, the class starts to write their I am From poems.  As usual we got together after reading and shared.  The poems the students wrote blew me away.  I think most of the students were proud of their writing and I hope they shared it with you.  If they did not, ask to see their poems.  As usual this writing will be in their writer's notebook.  

A Silent Discussion

A silent discussion...I know it sounds weird, but they are amazing.  Today we got to a crucial part of the One and Only Ivan.  Stella one of our main characters had passed away in her sleep and Ivan had made a promise to Stella that he was going to take care of the baby elephant Ruby.

I did not want the class to just briefly pass over this part of the book so I decided to slow things down and have a silent conversation.  A silent conversation is just what it sounds like.  Students have a conversation with their table and communicate through writing.  The room is silent but filled with conversation.  

I love these silent conversations for lots of reasons but reason number one is the students get to decide what they are going to talk about for the conversation.  Instead of me saying I want you to talk about this part of the book the students could pick any part of the book they wanted to discuss.  Most of our students decided to concentrate on what had just happened.  Then the papers are passed around the table and each student adds on to the conversation.  The papers make their way around the table and the students make the conversation "snowball" by trying to add more ideas each time they write. 

I was astonished at the work the students were able to produce.  Some groups talked about whether or not Ivan would be able to keep his promise.  Other groups talked about Mack, the owner of the Exit 8 Big Top Mall, and whether or not it was his fault that Stella was gone.  Another group talked about whether or not Ruby would be able to handle this event because she had already lost her family earlier in the book.

When we were all done students picked their favorite conversation thread from the ones they had at their table and shared them with the rest of the class.  This really allowed us to slow down and talk about this section of the book.  It did take a good deal of time but I thought it was so important to take this time and let students share what they were thinking about the book.

The Color Walk

Today we took a color walk.

During writing time we have been reading the book called a Writer's Notebook by Ralph Fletcher.

I love reading this book to the class.  It describes how Fletcher uses his notebook as a tool to help his writing.  In the first few pages of the book he writes the line, "If you dig it, they will come."  I love this line and not just for the Field of Dreams"ish" quality of the line.  The idea refers to Fletcher digging a hole in his father's yard that then gets filled with amazing creatures.  "If you dig it, they will come."  

I have tried to tell the class if you write it they will come.  What will come?  Amazing little nuggets of writing.  I think Fletcher is correct, our notebooks are going to be filled with amazing things.  When you give students TIME to write they will amaze you.

Fletcher also talks about living a writerly life.  This was our reason for the color walk.  A writer needs to notice things and write them down.  So today we picked a color and wrote it down.  Then we walked around the school and searched for that color.  Students wrote down quick phrases to describe what they were finding and of course they were amazing because...if you dig it they will come.

I do have to admit the color walk we took today was the hottest color walk I have ever taken, but the class still did an awesome job.  You can find this color walk in the writer's notebook.

We also took some more time to talk about text-to-text connections today.  Instead of a normal text, we looked at some amazing pieces of art.

These amazing paintings were the texts that we used today to think about text-to-text connections.  I was surprised at all the different things the classes were able to say that these paintings had in common. I guess I did not realize how artsy things were going to get in my room with a color walk and analyzing some Edward Hopper paintings, but I really enjoyed the day despite the heat.

Schema

Today we continued to talk about schema.  I had students think of what they knew about chicken nuggets (not too surprising they knew a lot) and then I asked them to think about everything they knew about foie gras (not too surprising they they did not know a lot).  I reminded the students that they had schema for chicken nuggets but not much schema for foie gras.

Schema or background knowledge is another thinking strategy that can help our readers.  I tried to show the students how I make text to text connections while I read another Patricia Polacco book The Keeping Quilt.  This was the fourth Polacco book I have read in the last few days we also have read Thundercake and Mrs. Katz and Tush and My Rotten Red Headed Older Brother.  As I read the book the class and I talked about what the books we had read had in common with the new book.

We will continue to talk about schema the rest of this week.  Tomorrow the class is even going to try and make text to text connections while looking at some famous paintings.  We also looked at some artwork while talking about metacognition and the students did an amazing job, so hopefully tomorrow will be a repeat.

Before we read aloud today I asked the students to fill out a one-word notecard.  We had actually done a one-word notecard on the first day of school where students told me how they felt about coming back to school.  On the one-word notecard today I had the students write down one word they would use to describe Ivan from The One and Only Ivan.  On the other side of the notecard the students had to explain why they picked this word to describe Ivan.

I love this little assessment to check if students are understanding a book.  I think it could be something you could use at home during at-home-reading.  The students would not even need to write it down they could just pick a character from their book and pick one word to describe the character and then tell why they picked that word.

We also started social studies today.  The students got to watch an interview with Kevin Plank, the founder of UnderArmor.  When the students were done I had them fill out a page in their Social Studies interactive notebooks listing the things that they think they know about entrepreneurs.  I will try and put a link to this video but tonight I am having some technical difficulties.

The rest of this week we are going to continue to discuss entrepreneurs.  We will think about the characteristics that make an entrepreneur and entrepreneur.  This will kick off our unit on economics.

Hope you are having a nice start to your week.

Ruby Arrives

In the last few days during read aloud a new character joined Ivan at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall.  Ruby is the new baby elephant brought to sell more tickets.  I hope that ours students are talking about this book with you at home.  The book is really starting to pick up pace and I think the students are starting to enjoy the book a bit more than before.

Today we took our claim card that now contained the students first claim and three pieces of evidence to support their claim and started to write.  Before I let the students go, I let the students grade me as I wrote my claim about going back to school.  To grade me I handed out a criteria list for the students.  We talked about how a criteria list can be used to grade almost anything.  To prove the point we made a criteria list for chocolate chip cookies and grilled cheese.  Once I thought the class understood the idea of a criteria list I wrote.  I thought I did a nice job but I am biased.

The students have a copy of this Back to School Criteria List that they can use to help them as they put together this first claim.  Hopefully you can find this criteria list and their actual claim in their writing folder.  The criteria list as I explained to the class is going to be what I use to assess the students writing.

And now I get to talk about the conversation calendars that we started this week.  I love conversation calendars.  After reading time each day this week and next week, students will have a conversation with me about their reading.  This conversation is done on paper.  Students tell me about their thinking as they read and then I take the paper home and respond to what the students are telling me about their books.

The conversation calendars allow me to have five conferences with each student in a two week period.  One week the students will respond to me on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and then the following week they will respond on Tuesday and Thursday.  The calendars also allow me to see how the students are using the thinking strategies we are discussing in class during their reading time.

These conversation calendars will come home the Friday after we finish the two week cycle, so keep an eye out for them in the Friday Folders.  You can also talk to our students about what they are talking to me about on these conversation calendars.

Schema

Today we introduced the class to our second thinking strategy...schema.  Schema is the background knowledge that students bring to a book that they are reading.  To start I had the students create a T-Chart in their reader's notebooks.  On one side of the T-Chart students got one minute to write as much as they could about Kings Island.  As you can imagine the students quickly filled this side with all the different things they knew about Kings Island.  On the right side of the T-Chart the students were asked to write down everything they knew about sabermetrics.  The class struggled on this side.  Sabermetrics is the statistical analysis of baseball data.  It was clear the class had a large amount of schema for Kings Island but not much for sabermetrics.

Then I asked the students to think about if I handed them two articles to read (one about Kings Island and one about sabermetrics) and they had to decide which would be easier to read.  It was amazing to hear why they thought the article about Kings Island would be a much easier to read.  We are going to continue to talk about how to unlock our schema when we read and what to do when we do not have schema for the rest of this week.  So if you hear the word schema, it just means the stuff you know before you read.

We also spent more time with the claim that we made yesterday.  If you don't remember, the students had to make a claim about whether or not coming back to school was a good or bad time of year.  Since we had already made a claim we needed to collect evidence or reasons to support their claim.  We did this today by having the class create a pro/con list.  I love a good pro/con list.

The students did an amazing job on this pro/con list.  Each student had to create a post-it note with one pro about coming back to school and one con.  We also asked the students to try and jazz up their writing.  I was blown away.  I am hoping tomorrow to get a few more close-ups of the excellent examples of writing.  

When we were done with the list students picked three pieces of evidence that they were going to use to support their claim.  Many of the students used our post-it notes to find their evidence.  Tomorrow I am going to write my claim about going back to school and then the classes will get their first shot at writing their own claim.  

I know I did not share about conversation calendars tonight but I promise I will get to them tomorrow.  Hope you are having a great week!!

Almost forgot to show you the class poem we made last week about summer.  We used our summer 3-in-3's to get these ideas.  

A Big Day

Today was a big day!

In writing we started filling out our heart maps (you can find these in our writer's notebooks).  The heart map is an idea generating technique.  Students think about people, places, or anything in their life that they truly care about and they put it on their list.  Later when students are looking for a writing idea they can look back to their heart map for something that might spark an idea.  We are going to continue to add to our heart map throughout this week and students are more than welcome to add some ideas while they are working at home.  I am hoping to try and take some pictures of heart maps and post them up here this week.

We also started to talk about claims.  Claims is something rather new in my classroom.  In fact it is what I wrote my research paper on last year while I was finishing my Master's at Miami.  Claim is the new trendy word for teaching logical arguments.  To me a claim is anything that you think that can be supported with evidence.  After we talked about claims and evidence students watched a video called the Fun Theory.

The students then discussed what Volkswagon was claiming in this advertisement and the evidence Volkswagon used to support their claim.  I love the video I hope you have time to watch it.

When the students were done with this we had them make their first claim of the year: Yes, I think going back to school is a good idea or no, I do not think going back to school is a good idea.  We are going to continue to work with this back to school claim this week and I will make sure to show you what we do.  

Claims will be a big part of our classroom this year and today was a nice introduction.

Tomorrow I will make sure to talk about the Conversation Calendars that we started today, like I said it was a big day.