Another fantastic day in Room 240 – here’s the skinny:

After Independent Literacy Time and Morning Meeting, we went down to the gym for a Rope Power presentation by the Burroughs Rope Power (jump roping) team. They will be performing/competing at Washburn HS tomorrow night at 6:30, if you’re interested. It was really good – the ids have obviously put in a lot of hard work. They had some really interesting tricks!

When we got back up to our classroom, it was almost lunchtime, but we were able to sneak in a shortened Reader’s Workshop. Today we re-acquainted ourselves with our new author “friend” – the poet Eloise Greenfield. I read one of her poems to the kids, and had them listen for and identify what we call “lovely language” and “inviting images” in her work, in the hope that the kids will translate her quest for “word madness” (words that excite the reader) into their own writing.

After reading, it was already time for lunch and recess. After recess, we had Read Aloud – and we finished our current Jigsaw Jones book (everything turned out fine, you’ll be happy to know… ☺). Our schedule was mixed up today, due to the Rope Power presentation, so instead of going to gym as we normally would have, we had the Writer’s Workshop that we missed in the AM. Today we talked about putting line breaks in poems, and how they control the rhythm of the poem, and “make it sing.” We looked at two different poems, written first in prose, and then broke them up into distinct lines to give the poem voice and make it sing. Then the kids went off to make their own poems. They created some really brilliant poems – I can’t wait to share them all!

After writing, we moved into Math Workshop – we are beginning a min-unit on telling time. Today we practiced with the old, tried-and-true Judy clock – we will be working on telling time to the hour, half hour, and quarter hour. Start asking your child what time it is (with a non-digital clock!).

After that, we packed up all of our stuff, and went down to the gym for class with Mr. Hill and Mr. Peterson to end our day. From there, it was straight out to the buses and home!