What we have been learning…

We have the best class!  Have I said that too many times? Well it’s what I think.  The students have been amazing during this first week of switching for reading and writing.  I am looking forward to all the students growth this year!  So here is some of what we learned about this week!

• They learned how to pick a good fit book.  A good fit book is a book they can read independently without much support from adults and still have a good understanding of what they read.  When we trying to find a good fit book this is what we do!
• Ask your self some questions?
• Is their a series I’d like to read?
• What topics interest me?
• What authors do I like?
• Preview the book
• read the cover
• read the a page
• look at the illustrations
• read the table of contents
• Use the five finger rule
• When reading a page put a finger up for each word you do not understand.
• 0-1 fingers too easy
• 2-3 JUST RIGHT
• 4-5 Too hard
• Students are making predictions left and right.  We have been making predictions from our reading.  Based on what you have read and what you already know about something…what do you predict.  Making predictions makes us think about what we are reading and that is so important.  We never want to read to read the words. We always want to take meaning from our reading and predictions make us think! :) When making predictions i give them the terminology such as “I predict….” 
• During writing we are learning about ideas and how choosing a good  interesting topic to write about makes people want to read your writing.  We write for people to read our writing.  We haven’t talked to much about this, but we will get to the fact that people write for a purpose.  So soon I will expose student to this idea. 
• We began math instruction this week with copies.  We are still waiting on our student books. :(  Students are enjoying using manipulatives to explore and solve addition problems.  On Friday we began making number sentences with plus and equal signs.  The students enjoyed finding the sum (the answer to an addition problem). 

I hope you all are having a fabulous weekend!   It has been a great one at the Whitehurst house the gators won! :)