Dance Recess, Magnets & Nonfiction

Getting jiggles out during the MANY days of indoor recess

Reading & Writing:  Last week we continued learning about Nonfiction Text Features.  These are things that nonfiction books may have that give us clues that the text is real.  Some examples include: photographs, captions, graphs, diagrams, bolded words and word banks.  We created our own Nonfiction Text Features books as individual references.  A focus on learning nonfiction is to stress that reading is to learn and nonfiction writing is writing to teach.  To prepare us for this type of writing, we made a list of topics that we "know a lot about, care a lot about, and would like to teach other people about."  These are topics we are "specialists" in.  Jimmy had a great question... He asked if he could write about his family because he knew a lot about them, cared a lot about them, and wanted to teach others about them.  This sparked a great discussion about the difference between nonfiction writing and narrative writing.  Nonfiction writing will become a focus of ours over the next month, along with letter writing. 

In our fiction studies, we will be analyzing characters to predict how a story will develop.  In small reading groups, we will practice all of the above skills with our leveled readers.  New books are coming home in bags this week, now that I've completed the 1-1 reading I have been doing.

Magnets:  We are having a great time exploring with these and learning about the push and pull force magnets have.  We will wrap up magnets next week.  Then we will do a bit more with weather.  Here are some pics from magnet exploration:

And some pictures from our Rainbow Loom celebration for filling our Fuzzy Jar for good behavior.  The kids know I'm continuing to look for PATIENCE, POLITENESS, RESPONSIBILITY and INDEPENDENCE.  Please refer to my email last week to read how they are being rewarded with demonstrating those.