Four on Friday

It has been a busy week...

1. My writers have been busy rereading, fixing and fancying up pieces of writing they have been working on during our unit on punctuation. We explored ways writers use punctuation and why it is important to writing. Some kids created question-answer books exploring the question mark, others wrote stories and practiced periods, exclamation marks and some even explored the quotation marks as they added some "talking" (not quite dialog) to their writing. One little writer tried the ellipsis. He wrote a Thanksgiving book using If you See a Kitten as a mentor text. John Butler writes if you see a kitten say...meow and if you see a pig say...pee-ew! The little writer in my room wrote: We played football...ouch ouch. We ate turkey...yum yum. There is more to this great book but I can't remember the rest. This mentor text was a recommendation in About the Author's by Katie Wood Ray. This picture book is so versatile and I love how kids can read and write like the text in this book. John Butler is the author and has other books that work in my room.

2. It is a cookie weekend. I have all the ingredients for sugar cookie cut outs, fudge, peanut butter kiss cookies and a layer bar with coconut. I want t0 make wedding balls too but need a good recipe. I will be baking many gifts this year!

3. Today we (as a family) received a random act of kindness. We don't know from who or why. There was a warm happy feeling in our hearts and we are going to talk about how we can do the same for another family.

4. I was looking through my professional books and came back to Brenda Parke's book Read It Again! It is an amazing resource for shared reading and how to approach it purposely within the classroom. Brenda helps you jump start ways to introduce and come back to texts that kids need practice with again and again!