Using Organization and Voice to Write About Ourselves
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Category Archives: writing
Word Study Connected to Story-Telling
During Writer’s Workshop we have been working on organizing ideas and connecting them together. We’ve also been working on adding voice to our writing, using interesting words and phrases.
So today we worked collaboratively to write a story using the students’ word study words. First students chose one of their weekly words and kept it a secret. They all joined the circle and each student had a turn to add a sentence or two to the story, being sure to include their secret word. Students decided to include ideas from our Global Read Aloud project as well!
Here’s our first collaborative story:
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Open in new tab Our Classroom Farm
After much research, inquiry, building and creating we have engineered a classroom farm!
It all started with the delivery of the eggs. Thank-you to a student’s family for donating the incubator and eggs! We are eagerly awaiting the hatching sometime next week!
Then we talked about things we knew about farms – some students knew a lot as we do have some farming families in our class. Many students had questions, especially when it came to animals. So we moved into some inquiry projects around farm animals. Students broke into small groups, did some research with books and videos, recorded their thinking and learning on a poster, and then presented it all to the class. Reading, writing, oral, and cooperative skills were all at work!
Then the engineers got to work building a barn, a silo, a farmhouse, a pasture, and a pen for the pigs and cows complete with a mud puddle! The students created animals for the farm including chicks, horses, cows, and pigs. They even managed to turn 2 big boxes into tractors!
Now, we’re all having fun playing in our classroom farm! Students are building relationships and social skills as they engage in the dramatic play. What a fun way to celebrate all of the work we engaged in with this farm inquiry!
A Look At Literacy Centres This Week
Lots of exploration and learning is happening in our Literacy Centres this week!
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- Word Reading/Writing
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- Find and Write
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- Sentence Building
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- Word Building in Action
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- Picture/Sentence Tracing
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- Loose Parts in Action
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- Reading Nook
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- Word Detective
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- Shape matching/Letter Building
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- Visualization
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- Farm Animal Inquiry
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- Farm Loose Parts
A Rainbow World
This week we spent a lot of time exploring the concept of diversity and thinking about how we can work and play together to make others feel good. We read the book: The World Made a Rainbow. The students realized that the colours came together to create something that made people smile, even when we couldn’t spend time together.
We then listened to and sang the song, “A Rainbow World” This song was a great way to introduce the idea that we all look different but when we come together we can be something great-just like a rainbow! Here is a video of another group of students performing the song!
Students all made a rainbow to display in our class. They used cutting and gluing skills.
Students used their drawing and writing skills to create a mural about working and playing together.
Then, students explored the concept of diversity further as they played with dolls representing children around the world!
With two more stories we made self-to-text and text-to-text connections, further exploring the idea of celebrating our differences and how we become something amazing when we come together!
It was time to do some writing! Students participated in a sharing circle, “What makes you special?” The students helped me to write some ideas to complete the sentence, “I am special because…” and then they got to work with independent writing.
It all came together with one bulletin board, “Each one of us is UNIQUE, but when we get TOGETHER the picture is COMPLETE!
Literacy Centres
Here are a few of the literacy-based centres that students are working on!
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- word detective
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- sentence building
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- How-to writing/sequencing
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- letter identification
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- journal writing
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- reading nook
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- letter matching
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- big book reading
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- puzzles
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- sight word sentence building
Amazing Puppeteers!
This week we have transformed our drama centre into a puppet theatre!
Through this adventure students are developing pre-writing skills (brainstorming and organizing ideas). They are using pictures and words to create scripts.
Next comes the collaboration as students work together to choose appropriate puppets and practise their play. Students are developing oral language skills, problem-solving, and leadership.
Students have presented 2 puppet shows to the class so far with great success! A question and answer session as well as sharing positive comments rounded up the experience. We’re looking forward to many more over the next couple of weeks!
Literacy Centres
Each morning students come into the room and choose a literacy centre to engage in. There are a large variety of centres for students to choose from that tap into a variety of learning styles. Students move around centres at their own pace and according to their own preferences/interests. Most activities are open-ended so that all students may access the learning activity as well as feel some challenge.
Here is a sampling of today’s activities. Activities change often!
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- name puzzles
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- roll and write
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- letter sort
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- ABC puzzle
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- letter blocks
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- Group reading
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- name writing
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- letter writing
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- Find the Troll game
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- name writing
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- letter rubbings
Building Adventures!
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- Jinger’s Structure
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- Drawing and Materials List
Many students have shown great interest in building projects! Up to this point, Lego has been the favourite building material. Students have built projects over a few days, wrote/drew about the project and then presented the project to the class. Pictures and recording sheets then go up onto our “Adventures with Inquiry” board.
Next, we watched a video about being an architect and talked all about that job.
Students have been invited to take on the role of an architect, plan out a building project, create a list of materials and then carry out their plan. Many different building materials are available and students are engaging in a lot of discovery!
One Big Pair Of Underwear!
This week we have been reading the story, “One Big Pair of Underwear” written by Laura Gehl and Tom Lichtenheld.
The students enjoyed the humorous pictures and language as they listened to it the first time. The next time we read it they thought about the message in the story. Many students expressed empathy as they realized that some of the characters were being left out and didn’t feel happy. Students made connections to the Zones of Regulation that we talk about everyday in our classroom and decided that some of the characters were in the Blue Zone. Many students felt as Matthew did, “I feel bad about that!”
Students then had the opportunity to be word detectives. They grabbed a clipboard and pencil and hunted around the room for words and pictures from the book and recorded what they found. This provided students with practise writing words and letters and also helped them to retell the story.
