Welcome back to school, and Happy New Year. I hope that the vacation was good (believe me, I’ve heard ALL about it today…) ☺ It’s good to be back in Room 240 – we had a good day!

This morning, after Independent Literacy Time (the kids can choose to write in the morning instead of reading now, if they like) and Morning Meeting, we had Reader’s Workshop. Today the kids were busy changing the books in their independent reading bookbags, as well as reading books at their levels. Several of the reading groups met with me today, and all of the kids write in their Reader Response Journals. After that, we had a fun sing-along (Down by the Bay again).

After our song, we had Writer’s Workshop, in which each student wrote and illustrated a page about their various exploits during Winter Vacation. I will be assembling all of the pages into a class book for al of use to read. They sure had some adventures, to say the least!

After writing, it was off to lunch and then back up to the room fort indoor recess, with the temperatures still near or below zero. After that, we read more from Mr. Popper’s Penguins. We then headed down to the gym for class with Mr. Hill and Mr. Peterson (indoor, again, due to the weather).

When we got back up to the room, we had Math Workshop. Today we began to talk about subtraction. We looked at ten frames, and wrote number sentences to match them, using both addition and subtraction (8+2=10 and 10-2=8, for instance). Then the kids played a game using dice called Roll and Record, in which they subtracted one of the numbers on the dice from the other.

After that, we had just a bit of time left for the afternoon, and used it to do another of our monthly self-portraits. Then we packed up, bundled up, and headed home!