Sorry for the lack of posting yesterday – meetings after school took up all of my time. At any rate, it was another great day in Room 240!

After Independent Literacy Time and Morning Meeting, we had Reader’s Workshop. Today we read another poem by our new poetry writing mentor/friend Eloise Greenfield. The poem is called “Reggie,” a sweet poem about a girl who misses her brother during the summer when he “moves out” to play basketball across the street all day long, only returning home to eat and sleep. We talked about “lovely language and inviting images” that Eloise used in her poem, as well as tried to tease out the theme (what she was trying to say or get us to feel, as opposed to the plot, which is what happened during the piece). Tomorrow we’ll talk about the structure of the poem – how she used line breaks and indentation to help her poem “sing.” The kids then went of to read their books, both with a buddy and independently. As the kids are meeting with me in reading group, they are reading Eloise’s poetry as well.

After reading, we had a song (Down by the Bay, again…), and then it was on to Writer’s Workshop. Today the kids learned about taking a huge idea that they feel strongly about (huge like a watermelon) and then find a small moment, detail, or object that they can write about to show their feeling for that idea (small like a seed). It’s a big topic for the kids, but they’re starting to get it. They have written some very cool poetry thus far!

After writing, it was time for lunch. But after lunch today, we all came back up to our room for the ice cream party that the kids earned by having 100% participation in the Read-a-thon. Ice cream sundaes can make for a bit of an active Read Aloud, but it was all good. For Read Aloud, we read two Poppleton books – this one and this one. After we finished the second book, we headed up to the art room for class with Mr. Fairbanks.

When we got back up to our room, we had Math Workshop. We continued our discussion of telling time to the nearest 15 minutes. The kids each had their own little clock to manipulate. After the kids had a good chance to practice with the clocks, they each made a time book, in which they recorded some of the important times throughout their days.

For Science Lab today, we did another experiment with electrical circuits – we added a switch to the system (which looks like this). First the young scientists had to figure out how to make the lightbulb light using all of the components (battery, lightbulb, switch, and three wires). Then they had to figure out why the switch works. We had some interesting discussion, and finally ‘discovered’ that electricity needs a full circuit to work!

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