Hat Day

Today was Hat Day at school! The kids came with great hats! They were even focused still:

We created a graph about our hats. The students drew a picture of their hat on a sticky note. Then I had them put them into categories and give the categories a title. They did a wonderful job!

Of course we had to take pictures of us in our hats.

A silly one too!

We studied all about shadows this week, but didn't have enough sun at the right times to get some pictures. Shadow pictures to come next week! (Fingers crossed!)

Group Penguin Reports

This week we had school wide-DIBELS testing, which meant a week off from reading groups. We spent that time researching penguins in small groups.

First we talked about what group work was. (I forgot to take a picture of our anchor chart, so here is what I can remember!) They came up with this definition:

Groups of people working together to get something done.

We talked about what a good group member was. They came up with:
- kind
- respectful
- helpful
- doesn't leave others behind
- puts things in the middle
- shares

We learned what it mean to COMPROMISE. We said we could do one of these things when we needed to compromise:
- Take turns using ideas.
- Use part of both people's ideas.
- Vote.

They did an amazing job working together! I was so impressed!

Here are some adorable pictures of them working together as groups:

This next week they will share their penguin reports with their classmates. I can't wait to see how they all do!

Writing Like Laura Numeroff

Laura Numeroff is one of my favorite children's book authors. The week before winter break we read A LOT of stories she wrote. Below are some of the titles we read:

Her books are catchy, funny and teach kids a wonderful writing style. Students quickly caught on to her patterns and identified these rules to follow if we were to write a story like Laura Numeroff.

• The title should start with "If you give..."
• She has one animal and one girl or boy in each story.
• The first letter of the food, should have the same first letter as the animal.
• It always ends with "and chances are..." and connects back to the first thing you gave the animal.
• One thing leads to another. 

They wrote a wonderful story (I only took notes and typed it up. They really wrote it all by themselves!) and illustrated it. It is now bound in our classroom. Feel free to come and check it out! Below is each page of the story: