Amazing Month of Reading

An Amazing Start to A

Reading Life

Room 303 is off to an amazing start as readers. After we collected all the data we found that as a class we have read 167 books. Our genre chart looks amazing as well. We learned that poetry, realistic fiction, and fantasy are favorite genres. The least favorite is traditional literature and biographies.

As a result of our data analysis we decided to set a class goal for the month of October. Our class is as follows:

Goal: For the month of October we would like to learn more about traditional literature to be able to make good personal choices about what books to read to meet the requirements.

Plan:

1. Mrs. March teach us about the traditional literature genre.

2. Read books of that genre during the weeks of October. READ LIKE A WRITER!

3. Write observations about what we are learning from our observations of the text and illustrations.

Favorite Books for September

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick ( Caldecott winner)

All the Broken pieces by Ann Burg ( historical fiction told in verse)

The Book Most People Want to Read

Wonderstruck By Brian Selznick

Learning to be scientists - September

Learning the Work of Scientists on PhotoPeach

What is a Scientist?

In an effort to get to know one another and to learn how to work in a team, we began our first inquiry question - What is a scientist?

This question became a firestorm of new questions:
What do scientist do?
What kind of scientist are there?
Can anyone be a scientist?
How so scientists learn about things?

Our discussions led us in many directions with differing ideas.  We decided the only way to really understand our questions is to begin the year doing the work of a scientist.  For the upcoming weeks we will be involved with the The Private Eye method that engages us in the skills of observation and thinking by analogy.  The purpose of The Private Eye is to "develop the interdisciplinary mind: Hands-on thinking skills, creativity, literacy, and scientific literacy."

On Friday, we organized our Private Eye notebooks and learned how to use a loupe, with the help of Mrs. Giese and Mrs. Piker.  We learned about 5 basic patterns in nature and sorted our nature objects into pattern groups.  The room was a buzz with what the students were discovering under the loupes.  Spirals, branching, explosions, spheres, and packing patterns popped in front of our eyes.

Beginning next week we will work on writing analogies and drawing.  My goal for the students is to develop the main habits of the artist/scientist:  developing a sense of wonder in looking closely at an object and thinking by analogy.  I am also looking to develop an understanding of best effort, focus, and following directions.  Our student bloggers will be posting our work and progress.