What We Notice

All year long I have asked the students to tell me what they notice.  This week we have been looking at what we call FANBOYS sentences and asking the class what they notice.  Today we looked at our fourth FANBOYS sentence.  I am always amazed when you ask students to notice things what they will notice.  

We started simple.  The class noticed a comma.  By today we were noticing that on both sides of the comma there was a subject and a verb.  In just four days the class went from noticing a small comma to figuring out the sentences.  We still have not figured why we call the sentences FANBOYS and what those FANBOYS are really called, but that will come as we look at more sentences.  

I am going to keep it short tonight.  Do not forget midterms are coming home tomorrow.

Hope you are all having a great week.

Book Ideas

I thought some of you might be looking for a few books this time of year, so I wanted to give some suggestions of some great new books that are out there right now.

My first suggestion...Clementine and the Spring Trip by Sara Pennypacker.  How could you go wrong with an author with the last name Pennypacker?  This book is getting some early Newbery buzz and would be a great book to add to any collection.

Another book that I think a lot of our students would enjoy would be the book Eruption by Elizabeth Rusch.  This nonfiction book about volcano eruptions would be a great addition to any library.  Also with more and more focus being put on nonfiction reading, it might be nice to show young readers what great nonfiction can look like.

A book that I was finally able to get my hands on last week is the new book from Kate DiCamillo.  Her new book is called Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures.  I must admit I am a sucker for any Kate DiCamillo book (Because of Winn Dixie, The Magician's Elephant, and of course The Tale of Despereaux).  DiCamillo's new book did make the short list for the National Book Award.

One last title that I think our students might enjoy would be The Real Boy by Anne Ursu.  I loved Ursu's last book Breadcrumbs.  Here is a quick blurb from Amazon about The Real Boy:  

On an island on the edge of an immense sea there is a city, a forest, and a boy named Oscar. Oscar is a shop boy for the most powerful magician in the village, and spends his days in a small room in the dark cellar of his master’s shop grinding herbs and dreaming of the wizards who once lived on the island generations ago. Oscar’s world is small, but he likes it that way. The real world is vast, strange, and unpredictable. And Oscar does not quite fit in it.

But now that world is changing. Children in the city are falling ill, and something sinister lurks in the forest. Oscar has long been content to stay in his small room in the cellar, comforted in the knowledge that the magic that flows from the forest will keep his island safe. Now, even magic may not be enough to save it.

I hope these helped if you were looking for some books. 

Hope you are all having a great week.

Social Studies

In Social Studies we have been learning about the earliest people in Ohio.  So far we have studied the Paleo-Indians, the Archaic, and now the Adena and the Hopewell cultures.  I have really enjoyed learning about these groups with the students.  Right before Thanksgiving break we finished our word bracket about the Archaic people.  Here is an example of one of our brackets:

You can see this student picked the words time, forrest, stable and burial to be in his Archaic Word Bracket Final Four.  I love these four words.  They seem to be the perfect four words to describe what we learned about the Archaic. 

The word burial describes the Archaic because their culture started to bury their dead.  The word stable is picked because it describes the climate.  Once the climate stabilized forests could grow and smaller mammals were hunted.  Time was picked because the Archaic were much better hunters.  This success with hunting allowed the Archaic time to concentrate on other things besides looking for food.  With that time the Archaic started to create the arts.  They made pots and masks which were important parts of their culture.  Finally the word forrest described the new living environment of the Archaic.  

One thing that I have enjoyed about learning about these early cultures in Ohio is how it ties into what we are learning about in reading.  In reading we are continuing to discuss Native American beliefs about the earth and the sky.  This week we have been reading some Native American Pourquoi Tales.  

The word pourquoi is French and in French the word translates to why.  So far we have read Pourquoi Tales that explain why the crow has black feathers, why the porcupine has quills, and why the red bird is red.  The class has started to keep a list of characteristics that they notice about these stories.  Obviously they have noticed that the stories explain the reason for the way something is today, but the have also noticed so much more.  Today on the characteristics list we added the idea that in the stories a  character is usually being rewarded.  The rest of this week we are going to continue to read Pourquoi Tales and analyze how they are similar and different to the tales we have already read.

I hope that you are enjoying your week. 

December

I'm back.  I cannot believe that it is already December.  I know that I have already said it this year but time really seems to be flying.

Today we started to talk about poetry in writing.  I read aloud part of the book Poetry Matters by Ralph Fletcher.

I love this book.  I think it really helps students understand all the possibilities of poetry.  Today the book talked about the power of poetry.  How we read poetry at funerals, graduations, retirements, and inaugurations.  Poetry is this powerful bit of writing and hopefully I can show that to the class.

Each day for the next three weeks I will read aloud a bit from Poetry Matters and then I will share a poem.  The poem we read today was "Lullaby" by Georgia Heard.  I found the poem in the book This Place I Know: Poems of Comfort.

"Lullaby" is an interesting poem written in two stanzas and only containing questions.  We read the poem together chorally after the class listened to me read the poem.

After reading, the class went back to their seats and wrote.  I was amazed to see some of the work that was going on around the room.  Many of the students borrowed the idea of asking questions and used that in their pieces.  Others were writing poems to important people in their life.  Others were writing about winter and upcoming holidays.

I love this writing unit.  I am always amazed at the writing these students are able to produce.  If you get a chance, I hope you take time to look at the writing in the writer's notebook.  

I hope you all had a great start to the week.

Our Books

Today we kept working on our bare books.  The energy in the room was amazing.  I was so impressed with all of the work that I had to get the iPad out to snap some pictures.  These are just some of the amazing work that I saw around the room.  I know these students are waiting to add color and illustrations and so much more to these pages, but I already think they are amazing.  Here our a few examples:

Here is a great page.  I love the flattened snowball and the word Flam and the repetition of and another!

A countdown to New Year's Eve with an example of what we call the Andpeater 3000!

A book cover.  What an amazing title and I cannot wait to see the illustrations that go in the boxes.  This reminds me so much of one page from The Wonderful Happens.

They know I am a sucker for Star Wars.  I cannot wait to see this project continue.  This book uses a reveal page that I love.  Also look at the comma between far and far.  We learned about this when Cynthia Rylant would say, "green, green rolling hills."

A page in the works.  This is another student using The Wonderful Happens to create this amazing book about a farm.  It might be a little hard to read so here you go:

in a little barn

someone love animals

a little girl

the animals love her,

the animals want more love,

and the wonderful happens:

The wonderful things that happens is revealed on the next page.

I am going to try and put some more examples up tomorrow.  I hope you have a chance to see these drafts in the process.  If you have not seen them yet, force them to bring them home this weekend.

Yeah I went a little crazy with the pictures today but that was the Thanksgiving lunch you missed out on today.  Bad idea to give someone my age this much turkey and not expect him to take an afternoon nap.  

Hope you are all having a great week.

A Good Day

Today we worked on some selective highlighting.  I had seen this idea of selective highlighting presented during our last early release.  I actually had tried this strategy before today, but I had to use different color post-it notes instead of highlighters.  The inclusion of the multi-color highlighters peaked the classes interest.  I loved seeing the faces of the students as they were being passed out.  All they wanted to do was use the different colors.

The idea of selective highlighting makes students search for evidence in a text and use different colored highlighters to mark where they find that evidence.  The text we were using today was a Native American story that included a coyote.  The students hunted for evidence of the coyotes persistence, evidence of the lesson in the story, and evidence of coyotes plan backfiring.

I love this idea of selective highlighting.  I wish I had learned this when I was in school.  To bring the point across about why we use this strategy I always start by having a student hunt around the room looking for something.  The only problem is I just tell them to find me something...not what to find.  The student walks around the room picking up random objects hoping they have found the object.  Unfortunately they never find the object.  Then I call on another student and ask them to find whatever I was looking for.  The student quickly picks up the object and brings it to me.

We have a discussion as a class about who had the easier job.  Obviously they know it is the second student.  Then I try to connect this with our reading.  When readers read with a purpose, reading is easier.  When the class knows what to look for in the text their reading becomes easier.  I hope the class will understand this connection of having a purpose when they read and better reading.  You can find the text we highlighted in the reading folder and if you want you could talk about why it is covered with all the different colors.

During writing we took some time to notice what Cynthia Rylant and the publishers of her books do to create the books.  The classes created an amazing list of what they noticed in the books we had been studying for the last few weeks.  After we finished our list, I passed out the bare books.  The class is going to take their first draft, which they have been working on revising, and start to create their Cynthia Rylant-ish book in these bare books.  In one class after the bare books had been passed out I saw two students reach across their desks and high-five each other.  I love this excitement for writing. I love this excitement for school.  This is what makes my job amazing.  It was a good day.

Hope you are all having a great week.  Tomorrow is the best lunch day of the year...Thanksgiving Lunch.  If you want to join us, lunch starts at 11:20.  You will not be disappointed in the pumpkin whip.

Writing Comments

Yesterday I was able to hand back the first drafts or our Cynthia Rylant writing projects.  The students also received their comment sheet.  My hope is that the students will use these comments to work on improving their writing projects.  You can find these comment sheets in the writing folder.

I already saw the students thinking about what they wanted to add to their first draft or cut from their first draft or rework.  The students are going to start show me the changes they are planning to make for their final draft tomorrow.  The class is excited about creating their final draft in a bare book.

We also read our second coyote story today.  When we were done with the story, the students went on a pronoun hunt throughout the text.  Tomorrow we are going to look at the story again and think about how it related to our first coyote story.

I am going to keep it short tonight.  Hope you are all having a great week.