Hat Day

Tomorrow is our rally for Rosh Chodesh Adar-2!

To get into the purim spirit we will be dancing and all wearing a fun hat! Please help your child choose a hat to wear for the rally tomorrow.

Thank you!

Our Favorite Books...

Thank you so much to the parents and grandparents who made it in to read a story to our class... We loved hearing stories from our friends homes...

Our morning at the Library and literacy fun lesson...

On Monday we had a really nice and productive morning at the library. We first had a tour of the library with an experienced children's librarian. She showed us how to find books, where different genres of books are and generally how a library works. She knew about all the popular books that children our age like to read, the new ones and old favorites. We felt so good that we know where things are and can navigate ourselves and figure out how to find books we want! Then we got to choose 2 books each and we checked them out with our library cards. (Books are due back to library in 3 weeks - The children's cards and receipts will be returned tomorrow). The bus ride back to school was very quiet. We were all very busy reading and enjoying the books that we checked out from the library!

In the afternoon we had a special literacy fun lesson - for the last day of literacy month. We got into pairs, chose a book and mimed out scenes from the book until our friends guessed which book we were acting. We also chose a book and made up a new ending...

We are all real fans of books!

Our New Writing Unit - Touchstone Texts and Reading like a Writer...

We have begun immersion into our new unit. We will be reading other author's work like a writer and noticing and modelling their techniques!

The last 2 units we learnt how to move through the writing process from brainstorming to publishing when writing a narrative and a piece of non-fiction. In this unit we will be especially emphasizing good techniques and styles of a writer!

On Tuesday, we read 'Hello, Harvest Moon' by Ralph Fletcher. We noticed the wonderful language he uses that makes us go "ooh, aah". We discussed how writers start off with ordinary language and work hard to make it extraordinary. We found so much memorable language in this book, describing the moon.

Then we got to work ourselves! we wrote three ordinary sentences and changed them into memorable language.

These are some examples of what students in our class wrote:

Ordinary language --------------------memorable language

my baby likes to crawl around ------------ My baby is a born explorer

The rain is loud --------------------The rain is scratching the sky, with a drizzling, loud sound

The milk is good------------------------------- The milk tastes gorgeous

cold ---------------------------------------Crisp cool air

My sister is cute -----------------------My sister is adorably cute

It shines -------------------------------It gleams and glows

On Thursday we noticed the word choices that were used in 'My Chinatown'. We each had our own copy of the text and we highlighted words and sentences that we think are wonderful. We discussed that when a writer describes well, we get a real picture in our mind. We then chose 3 memorable phrases that we liked and illustrated them!

We will be carrying on immersing ourselves in techniques and strategies that we can learn from these authors and then we will be beginning a piece of our own...

Library cards...

Our trip to the library is coming up this Monday, 28th of Feb. If you would like your child to be able to borrow a book please send in her library card by Friday. Parents will be responsible for returning the book that was borrowed.

Thank you,

Morah Rivki

Personal Spelling Tests

Starting from this week on Friday we will each be taking a spelling test on words that we have personally misspelled in our writing...

Each child has a 'personal spelling list' which I have taken from misspelled words in their writing. On Thursday they will check off 10 words to learn. On Friday they will test each other on the words and their meanings. If they spell the words correctly, they will highlight the word and not need to be tested on it again. Otherwise it will be included in the next weeks test and they will have a chance to relearn it.

We will still be continuing with 'words their way' - word study and sorts. Spell checks for the sorts will be taken after several sorts together and the tests will be on Mondays.

An Author came to visit us!

Anne Koffsky is an author and illustrator and has written and illustrated more than 20 books!

She came to speak to us and share with us her techniques!

She taught us about the importance of a strong connection between text and picture; Steps of the writing process: stop! think! Get an idea, do research... Very close to what we learn in our own writing workshops!