Q: How do you find out where a mosquito has bitten you?

A: Start from scratch.

Another great day in Room 240. Here’s the scoop:

After Independent Literacy Time and Morning Meeting, we had Reader’s Workshop. Yesterday we worked on predicting, as it is a skill that readers have and something that readers do as they read. Yesterday we read a fiction (story) book, and today we extended the lesson by reading a non-fiction book about animals and their babies and working on predicting in those types of books as well. Then the kids had a chance to do independent reading, buddy reading, and write a reader response.

After that, we sang a song – “In the Ocean” – an old favorite. Then we moved on to Writer’s Workshop. Today the kids continued with the pieces that they are working on, and we also began to have writing groups during work time, in which I introduced the spelling program that we will be using for the balance of the year. There should be a spelling list for the week in your child’s folder today – we will be working on the words in school as well, and we’ll have a test on Friday.

After writing, we went down to the lunchroom for lunch and then out for recess. When we got back up to the room, we finished our Nate the Great book during Read Aloud. Then it was down the hallway for Media class with Mrs. Hennen.

When we got back to our room, we had our sharing time from Writer’s Workshop (I didn’t have the heart to interrupt them while they were writing – they were all so intent). After that, we had Math Workshop, in which we worked on composing and decomposing numbers (thinking about the numbers that can be used to make a number). We just go a new math tool yesterday in first grade (they look like this) and we used them today!

At the end of the day, we had a combined Math Workshop and Science Lab – since we are working on measurement in both, the kids practiced drawing lines of certain lengths (only inches so far), and then went around the classroom measuring pretty much anything they could get their hands on, and writing down the results on the recording sheet. (I can tell you with some degree of certainty that my head is either 6½ or 8 inches from top to bottom…).

When we finished that, we measured the [rapidly] expanding water animals and put the data on the chart.

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