Q: Why shouldn’t you play cards in the jungle?
A: Because there are too many cheetahs!

Another very productive day in Room 240 – here’s the lowdown:

After Independent Literacy time and Morning Meeting, we had Reader’s Workshop. Today we talked about the strategies that readers use when they encounter a tricky word – see how many your child can recall! Scroll down to the post from last Tuesday for a list of the strategies. The kids also traded books for their independent reading bookbags, and did both independent reading and buddy reading. After that, we had a song (the Planet song, which is pretty catchy, actually – have your child sing it to you!).

After our sing-along, we had Writer’s Workshop. Today the kids worked on practicing reading their stories that they will present at our Writer’s Celebration on Wednesday. We will be hosting a class of kindergartners to read our work (don’t worry – the next two celebrations will DEFINITELY be parent and family invites). After we had practiced and done a little ‘fixing and fancying,’ they were almost literally dying to have some time to start new pieces, and who am I to say no to eager writers?

By the time we finished all of that, it was time to head downstairs for lunch and recess. When we got back up to our room, we read some more of Cam Jansen, and then we were off to the gym for class with Mr. Hill and Mr. Peterson.

When we got back up to our room, we had Math Workshop. Today the kids played a card game with number cards that is similar to “Go Fish” – except that they had to make combinations of ten, instead of matching the numbers. After they got the hang of that, they were able to choose which game to play with their partner – Go Fish, Face-up (the game from last week), or Face-down (like Memory or Concentration, but with making tens again).

At the end of the day, we had Science Lab. We worked on the planet project again today – the kids did a little bit of research about their planet, and then we measured out where the planets should go in the room (in scale). It is amazing to see – in our model, Mercury is about 4 inches from the sun, and Pluto is all the way across the room (diagonally). We’re still working to get the kids’ heads around the concept of a model, but the distances are really interesting. We will be hanging our planets tomorrow, hopefully, so stop in and have a look when you get a chance!

Whew. After all of that, it was time to pack up and head out!