Wednesday

Powerful Poetry Stations Part One


Laura has the most amazing poetry stations happening in her first grade classroom!!!  You can see from the photographs below some of the ways these first graders are learning about poetry.
Laura began the unit by posing the question WHAT IS POETRY? She set up stations. The kids were introduced to the stations and were told that over the course of the week, they would be experiencing each one. Laura put kids in groups of four. The first exploration lasted about fifteen to twenty minutes.

THE DISCOVERY CENTER
  • Choose an object
  • Draw and write what you see
  • THINK This makes me think...
  • Use your poet's eyes
  • Write 




MAGICAL WORDS CENTER
  • Read the poem together!
  • Stop when a word makes you think WOW
  • Write It

 
   


 RHYTHM CENTER
  • Listen together!  
  • Tap it out!
  • Look at the words.
  • Try your own.



Happy Poetry!

Friday

Friday Favorites

Favorite LITERACY related Things in School...

How To Stories In Kindergarten {love the illustrations} & Topics


Laura's class  coming up with new categories for books.



Making Predictions In Kindergarten

Writing Persuasive letters to David to follow the school rules!

Jess's POET TREE in first grade. 

Happy Friday!!! 


Thursday

Stronger Ways to Retell

It's that time of year when we are helping students learn stronger ways to RETELL. Kids are learning that there is more than one way to retell a book. We try to always encourage the kids to use the book when retelling. {Thanks to Christy for sharing these}.



Retelling In Kindergarten

 WHO? WHAT? WHERE? Retell 
It might sound like: "Mrs. Wishy-Washy is washing the animals on the farm."

WHAT HAPPENED? Retell


It might sound like: "First, the animals were playing in the mud. Then, Mrs. Wishy-Washy told them to go in the tub. Next, she cleaned the animals. Last the animals run off to play in the mud again! "

BIG IDEA! Retell

It might sound like: "Mrs. Wishy Washy washes all the dirty animals. She washes the cow. She washes the duck. She washes the pig."


Retelling in First and Second Grade 


Grade One Character Unit of Study {Teacher College} & Jenn Serravallo Strategy book

  1. Have the kids keep track of the When and Where
  2. Retell across your fingers
  3. Give kids 5 Post-its to spread across the whole book
  4. Retell just the important parts
  5. Mark pages with Post-its (don't need to write on them)

In second grade, we are encouraging students to talk and stop and jot.  We know that the kids have to be able to say it before they can write it.
  • Read a chunk and talk about it
  • Read a chunk and stop and jot
  • Use the sentence stem This part is important because...
  • Ask Who? What? Where?
  • Retell the important events in order


We are practicing a lot of these strategies during interactive read aloud too.

Happy almost Friday!