Another fine day in Room 240!  We were busy and quite productive.  Read on to hear all about it!

After Independent Literacy Time and Morning Meeting, we had Reader’s Workshop.  Since the kids all got new books for their book bags yesterday, they were itching to read and read, so we had independent reading time, followed by Buddy Reading time, and then they all wrote in their Reader’s Response Journals.

After that, we sang – Leah chose Stone Soup as the song of the day.  Then it was on to Writer’s Workshop.  Today I taught the kids about how writers write with their readers in mind, trying to think about what their readers know and can relate to, in order to make their writing more interesting.  I wrote about a trip that I took to the Sahara Desert (many years ago), and the kids were left wondering about some of the details that I ‘took for granted’ that they would know.  Then all of the kids went off to write and try to consider their readers.

Then it was time for lunch and (indoor) recess, then read aloud – Mr. Popper’s Penguins again.  After read aloud, we headed down the hall to the Media Center for class with Mrs. Hennen.

After Media we moved on to Math Workshop, in which we practiced our newfound subtraction skills – we’re still working on the concept of subtraction (how and why it works) versus the actual computation, which will come soon.

Then, we had Science Lab.  Today, we began our new mini-unit on sharks.  We talked about all of the prior knowledge that we all had about sharks, and then we opened up a traveling trunk from Underwater World (at the Mall of America) that has all kinds of cool things to look at.  Today I showed the kids two shark jaws (real ones, but happily disconnected from a shark…).  We got to see how sharp the teeth are, and how the teeth are lined up inside the jaw, ready to replace one that goes missing.  Pretty cool.

After all of that, it was time to clean up, pack up, and bundle up, and head home!