Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Writer's Workshop

As we begin to finish up our first unit of study, "Launching the Writer's Workshop," it is amazing to see the skills the children have learned over the last six weeks in practice. Each child has internalized the writing process they have been taught. They know that writers:

1.) Think of a topic they know about or enjoy.
2.) Make a plan in their minds for the drawing and writing of their story.
3.) Draw and write their story the best that they can.
4.) Edit and "fancy up" their story.
5.) Publish their piece at our author's celebration.

At this point, each child has chosen a piece and is working on "fixing it," by checking to make sure it makes sense, fixing it if needed, adding to it if needed, and fancying it up. In this photo, you can see a child correcting some spelling mistakes to make sure his readers understand what he was writing. "Fancying up" our writing is a favorite step in the process, because children get to make their writing beautiful, just like real authors and illustrators. In the photo below, you can see this student doing just that in preparation for publishing.


We are looking forward to our author's celebration on Monday. We will celebrate with each other our hard work by reading our pieces and enjoying a special snack together. After this celebration, we will begin our next unit of study, "Small Moments," where we will continue to learn more about being writers!

Friday, October 23, 2009

Five Little Pumpkins

We had so much fun on Wednesday decorating pumpkins with our 5th and 6th grade Reading Buddies! We spent time deciding if our pumpkin would have a happy face, a mad face, a scary face, or a sleepy face and then worked together with our buddies to draw our face with markers. As you can see, the finished products were great! Hopefully these festive creations will help to decorate your homes for the upcoming Halloween celebrations! Thank you to everyone who sent in a pumpkin or two or three for this fun project!

Welcome to the Room Five Blog!

Thank you for visiting my new classroom "blog." I am hoping to use this online tool as a way to communicate with all of you the exciting things that are happening in our classroom. Eventually, this blog will replace the bi-weekly classroom newsletter that I write. I believe that this blog format will provide you with a glimpse of the daily activities in Room Five and can serve as a great conversation starter for you and your kindergartner. Enjoy exploring this site and peeking into the wonderful world of kindergarten!