Wednesday, April 29/09

Movie night … who’s turn is it to buy the tickets?

We started our class with a couple of lines of information and we ended up with quite a bit of discussion about going to the movies – who should pay, the cost etc. This was an introductory activity to our newest strategy – Making Inferences.  We know that sometimes we have to “read between the lines” or infer what is going on based on the information we have. We look for clues to help us understand what we see, hear or read.  We spent most of this class practicing this strategy – first in an exercise given to you and next in an online game.  Good work by the way.

You had some time to read at the end of the class today. I need a journal entry from everone tomorrow.

Tuesday, April 28/09

Two twins ????

Cute eh? However, what word is unecessary  in my caption? You’re right. We can take out the word “two” because we know there must be two when we say twins. The word “two” is redundant. We did an exercise this morning where we had to find the redundant word(s) in the sentence. It required careful reading and thinking. Being redundant in our speech/writing is something for us to watch for.

Today we ended class early so we could see the play  – Mystery At Shady Acres. Hopefully you all enjoyed it. Enjoy this lovely afternoon and we’ll start a new strategy tomorrow – inferencing.

Friday, April 24/09

Horse jumping …

Happy Friday! We have had a full week. First thing this morning we did vocabulary work. Breaking down word parts and learning sounds is helpful in reading new words. Good work.

Friday is Reader’s Theatre day so we did a new play today. It was called RYDER. You were all EXCELLENT. The best reading yet.

Have a great weekend and enjoy the great weather!

Thursday, April 23/09

Coping with moving …

What a great day! We had to do a few house keeping things this morning (ie count our donation $$ for Easter Seals…) Then, in keeping with our Asking Questions theme, I introduced you to the strategy of SQ3R. That stands for  Survey, Questions, Read, Recall and Review. It is a great strategy to help us read/study text books and articles. We used an article Dealing With Tough Times to practice this strategy. You did a great job – especially with turning the subheadings into questions and then answering them. We had a little comprehension quiz at the end of this activity. The article dealt with one student’s experience with his dad’s job loss and having to move. We made great connections with this as all of us has had the experience of having to move. (e

We finished our day with independent reading &/or journal. Tomorrow we will do Reader’s Theatre. Don’t forget your $2 if you want to see the play Monday.

Wednesday, April 22/09

Celebrity Rehab …

Today we started with a think/read aloud about addiction and how the media portrays rehab treatment. We discussed how this is probably an unreal portrayal. We had lots of good discussion around this topic and some good questions. Thanks to those of you who offered to read aloud for the group. Excellent.

We followed up with a Question activity from our program. The article we read dealt with force and motion. This was a tricky topic. It was hard to generate questions. When we “wondered why” we figured because it was a topic most of you were not very interested in. That is a reality and many times we have to deal with material we don’t find interesting. Even so, we need to find ways to understand that material because it will probably be more challenging than material we are interested in. That’s where our reading strategies can help. I shared my questions and then we got talking!!

Tuesday, April 21

Letters, letters, letters  …

It has been awhile since we did a vocabulary lesson so we did one today. We were focusing on how the letter “E” at the end of a word causes the previous vowel in the word to have the long sound ( bit; bite. ) Hopefully you are improving your spelling/word decoding skills.

We finished up the Question Assignment today. More question work tomorrow.

Monday, April 20/09

Fishbone?

Good Monday morning. I thought I would start off our week with a good fish story as I supposed some of you may have been fishing on the weekend. Together we read “Fishbone, Gramps  ‘n Me.”  We asked questions before, during and after the reading. It was great to see that you were also using the visualization and making connection strategies too. Good work.

You continued to work on the questioning assignment. Good work designing skinny & fat questions.

Wednesday, April 15/09

Another Paul Kropp novel …

Yesterday we introduced the new strategy of QUESTIONING and we brainstormed some questions. Today … we kept on wondering!! I gave you time to work a bit more on your wonderings and then you composed them into “I Wonder” poems. I think we have learned that some questions are easy to answer and some are harder to answer. Sometimes our questions do not have answers at all. That is OK!! Just asking questions helps us be better learners beacuse it means we are thinking.

Because I am away tomorrow we did a Reader’s Theatre today. We did a scene from Tag Team.  Once again … great job by everyone. You are better every time you perform.

I hope you will have a great day tomorrow. I am leaving a Questioning assignment. I would also like you to have a journal entry completed bt the end of class.

Have a good evening … there may be trout for supper! See you next Monday.

Tuesday, April 14/09

 

What do you wonder…

Welcome back. I hope you all had a nice Easter break and the bunny dropped off a few treats at your house!!  Time to get back to work.

Today I introduced a new reading strategy … Asking Questions. Sounds simple but sometimes we just listen or read and forget to question what we are hearing/reading. We can learn to ask questions before, during and after reading. Asking questions will help us better understand. It will also help the teacher know what you struggle with. And, other students will learn from your questions too. Questioning is a  skill that will follow us through life. It is what makes us life long learners.

We started an activity called “I wonder…” today. Keep thinking tonight about the things you wonder about. We’ll get back to our activity tomorrow.

We did some silent reading and tied up some unfinished work. See you all tomorrow – unless you somehow get “lost” along the Morell River or some other local fishing hole!!  I wonder how many students will be “gone fishing”  tomorrow???  I wonder ….

Monday, April 6/09

 

Maurice “Rocket” Richard’s jersy  … #9 !!!

Today we started our day with something called Probable Passage. I gave you a list of words from a story and you had to decide from the list what words were characters, setting, problems, outcomes or unknown words. Then you had to come up with a gist statement – a guess about what you thought this story would be about. We then read the story. It was one some of you have heard before – The Hockey Sweater by Roch Carrier. We then went back and made some changes to our word placement after reading the story.

The rest of the class we worked on small “tests” … finding the main idea and comprehension. There will be no class for the rest of the week due to exams. Good luck with any exams you have and have a great Easter.