Another super day in Room 240! 

Here’s a joke that I heard today:

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Dishes.
Dishes who?
Dishes the police - open up!

This morning, after Independent Literacy Time and Morning Meeting, we had Reader’s Workshop.  We began our Author Study of Mem Fox in earnest today – we started of by making a list of the literary components of Mem’s stories that we wanted to pay attention to – the kids came up with Setting, Characters, Plot, Writer’s Craft (how she tells the story, and interesting details and words that she includes), and Connections (how we all relate to the book).  Then we read Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, and talked about various aspects of the story.  Then the kids had independent reading time, and I worked with each individually doing a literacy assessment.

After reading, we moved on to Writer’s Workshop.  We talked again about how writers answer Reader Questions in their writing, and I told the kids about how Mem Fox took 49 drafts and 2 years to write Koala Lou, which is a book of only 585 words – she kept on thinking about Reader Questions, and asking her friends for their ideas and comments.  The kids then went out to try to write like Mem!

After that, it was down for lunch and out for recess, and then back up to the room for Read Aloud – today it was a short one – Mr. Putter and Tabby Fly the Plane (if you don’t know about this series, it’s a great one – kids LOVE it – see the whole list here).  After the book we headed down the hall for Media with Mrs. Hennen – I know that the kids were in the computer lab for part of their time there.

When we got back to our room, we had Math Workshop – the kids each made two posters of a subtraction story – with an story problem that they made up, an illustration, and four different ways to solve the problem.  Some of them had very creative story problems, as you can probably imagine…

After that, it as on to Science Lab – the kids learned about the parts of a shark, a fish, and a whale, and tried to figure out if a shark in a fish or not (it is), and then how fish are different than whales.

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