Reader's notebooks and letter after letter after letter

As soon as my kiddos walked in this morning, their eyes lit up when they saw stacks of reading response notebooks across my desk ~ some with books banded to them. They could barely wait until after morning meeting to find out what it was all about. When I explained that Katie Byrd dropped in and was very excited to see what they were reading, they smiled ear to ear! She took time out of her day to respond to many of their letters about their reading. Again, getting them to wait until reading workshop to read their letters and see what she may have recommended was a difficult task. 

Sometimes, I think the most difficult task is keeping up with all of their responses myself. Two classes makes for a lot of reading! Enough to make your eyes cross if you're not careful. ;) Making sure that all students have responded and written their letters, or even simply making sure to get to all that have before they look at me with their "what's taking so long" look can be overwhelming, LOL. Yet, I have to say that this really helps me know exactly where my kids are in their independent reading. I learn so much about my kiddos this way, and boy do they have fun writing back and forth with me. As tiring as it can be, I sure do love it, but I can't wait to tell Katie how excited they were to read her letters.

I will post some pics of reader's notebooks here soon. 

Speaking of morning meetings, thought I might share a couple of morning messages. My kiddos crack me up...they keep me on the mark if I don't give them a message either on time (you can usually hear sighs if I am still writing as they walk in, haha) or if it is too short. That is what the 10-10-12 message is referring to. 

You might notice that we are still focused on practicing what a complex sentence is. I have tried to include at least one, if not two, in every morning message. I also try to use the vocabulary from our read alouds as well.  

Just one picture book for tonight, but it is perfectly fitting for the topic of letters. :) We all love to get them don't we! The Long, Long, Letter by Elizabeth Spurr and illustrated by David Catrow is a great little read for of hyperbole and alliteration. We move through the seasons as sweet, lonely Hetta waits for her letter. Love the illustrations, but if you have been visiting long, you are not surprised. ;)

With that, I will close with a short little post for the night. There is a first for everything.

Happy reading...

When I was little,

When I was little, we couldn't jump on our laptop and blog away our days and nights! ;) Boy, am I glad I am not little anymore. Oh wait...I mean I am glad to be older. No, that's not it LOL...wish I was still a little bit little hehe, but glad to be a bit more grown up, sometimes, wink wink!

We have jumped in to complex sentence structures with both feet! The grammarian in me just LOVES teaching this! Well, I should say the grammarian-wanna-be! Lord knows, there was a time that teaching complex sentence structures made my head hurt and my eyes cross. That was until I spend one summer afternoon at the workshop of Mr. Jeff Anderson, aka "the write guy." Yes, I know I repeat myself at times, but I promise you that his wonderful book Mechanically Inclined changed my teaching life; can you hear the sigh? I swear I should get paid as his agent or something as much as I brag on his work, but all the same, I am thankful to have found it. Sadly enough, I have become a "write-guy groupie" of sorts, and if he ever makes it close enough, I go out of my way to make it to one of his workshops. 

I now look forward to this part of writing, and we have a ton of fun with it! So much so that I almost feel smart enough to call myself a grammarian. Just don't look to closely at all that I have written here. ;)

Well now... how was that for a rabbit trail? Anyway, let's just say that there are plenty of "aaahhhhwwwwheewwbuuusss" howls happening in our room right now. Actually, that is our fun way of saying AAAWWUBBIS, which is an mnemonic device to help my kiddos recognize subordinating conjunctions and dependent clauses, comma causers: although, after, as, when, while, until, because, before, if, and since. 

One of the fun lessons in his book Mechanically Inclined refers to When I Was Little by Jamie Lee Curtis as a gentle introduction to the ever-so-lovely subordinating conjunction, and luck of all luck, wouldn't you know I already had the book. After reading the book, I display some of my own when I was little thoughts, and we discuss what we notice about the sentences. This truly is an easy bridge into complex sentences, and it is so simple that it's genius! The fun part is listening to their ideas of "when I was little." So cute, my kiddos!

All of this opens the door to the idea of independent clauses, dependent clauses, and comma causers, and builds the habit of looking for where to put the comma if they happen to use one of these words in their writing, which is what we want, right?! We have fun with the poem on the first few days, and trudge through those first looks of furrowed-brow, open-mouth confusion until the light bulbs start glowing, the brow relaxes a bit, and the slack mouth forms into smiles as they see just how easy it can be. Don't you just love seeing those light bulbs start glowing!

 

As the students publish their finished pieces, I will share them here. If you have any of your own when I was little thoughts, please share them here. I would love to share them with the class!

This is another fun mentor text that I will pull out
later to review  and practice :) You should see the
responses for this one! 

I have started reading homework this week to a chorus of boos, but for the most part, I think they are getting used to the idea as they see my expectations. It doesn't take long for most to see that I am not trying to torture them; yes I know, believe it or not! In discussing our expectations, we have reviewed common reading strategies that help on those benchmark like passages. Definitely NOT my favorite kind of reading, but it has to be done I guess. If it were up to me, we would all sit around in comfy chairs that are in cozy places and read whatever we wanted as long as our hearts content! But I guess they didn't ask me, LOL.

I only have one little picture book to share today. Can you believe?

Where's My Mummy? by Carolyn Crimi was one of the sweet (cheap) little finds I found on my minute hour long run into Books-a-Million. I really didn't buy it so much to read aloud, but rather just to add to my library. As soon as the kids saw it though, their begging and pleading won out, and I read it aloud. The pleasant surprise was all of the wonderful alliteration and onomatopoeia in it. So yet again, I planned that!

With little baby mummy, I shall say goodnight! Happy Reading!

Where to begin??

Holy cow we have done so much already this week! We are trucking along through figurative language and having a great time at it. Just like I predicted my kiddos LOVED our focus on simile! We have looked at simile, onomatopoeia, alliteration, and tomorrow we begin metaphor. Another one of my faves! This means I have a plethora of books to share, hehe!

Ahh..one of my favorite sights!

But before I even start with all of the fun work we have been doing in class...I must share my cheesiness...We got part of our first book order today! Whoop! Whoop! Sometimes I think I get more excited than the kids.

Can you just smell that amazing new
book goodness! LOL

How sad is it that out of all of those books in the box above ~
these are mine. Oh my goodness!

Okay...all my goofy cheesiness aside, some fun and exciting learning has been happening in Room 506 all week! 

 

Tuesday started with a celebration of David Catrow. Ok, well not really, but we sure enjoyed a couple of his illustrated masterpieces as we looked at onomatopoeia. (What a word that is!) Wet Dog! by Elise Broach and That's Good! That's Bad! by Margery Cuyler are packed with great sound words, better known as onomatopoeia. I did warn you that you would see much of Mr. Catrow on this blog. There is not much that I don't love about his quirky illustrations.

Mud by Mary Lyn Ray is a messy look at touch sensory detail and onomatopoeia. The gardener in me loves Mud!                        

Now, moving on to alliteration. Lots of lessons to be learned in the stories we shared for alliteration. So here I double dipped, and we of course discussed common themes in literature. Bootsie Barker Bites by Barbara Bottner and Some Smug Slug by Pamela Edwards not only showed us the power of alliteration but also that sometimes we get what we deserve. Kindness can go a long way and Bootsie Barker and Smug Slug learned a hard lesson.

 

We then practiced using alliteration with our names...

  

Tomorrow we will be looking at metaphor! This lesson is right up there as one of my faves, but I am a broken record at this point with all my "faves."

 

My School's a Zoo by Stu Smith (ah-hmm, yes ~ illustrated by one Mr. David Catrow. I promise I am not a stalker.) and Misery is a Smell in Your Backpack by Harriet Ziefert are both great metaphors. Not the only great ones of course, but I enjoy them. After reading Misery is a Smell...we will create a metaphor poem of sorts, but we will have fun and think happier thoughts, looking at "Happiness is."

This is last years, I will post this years later this weekend :)

I always like to use music where I can when talking about figurative language, and this is a perfect example of metaphor, simile, and onomatopoeia! Cracks me up every year when kids start realizing that they have been singing and using similes and metaphors all this time without even knowing it. I just love seeing those little light bulbs turning on!

One last piece of writing before you think that is all I teach. I wish I can take credit for this, but of course I can't. (Remember, hardly any original thoughts in like forever!)  I borrowed it from my son's middle school teacher. This was a homework assignment that he brought home years ago in which he had to create a character that wears a cap for "Ivan Capp." I have loved using it with my own kiddos to help them remember the parts of speech. This will stay up and we will refer to it OFTEN!

 

So Grandma Dowdel has been moved out to the hall for now. Although I don't miss looking at our anchor of her (Katie Bird is working on another for me,) I do miss her character. We still talk about her almost daily when we talk about character traits. Such a strong character to start our year. My chunky attempt at a trumpeter swan will become the background for one our our Trumpet of the Swan anchors. We can only hope that most of his chunkiness will be covered once we finish the book. 

Just thought I would share another glaring example of cheesiness. Not sure if I should, but I just can't help myself. My friends have already rolled eyes and giggled, so why not you? As we began The Trumpet of the Swan, we started with a short biography of E.B. White which discussed his love of animals. At one point we discovered that Mr. White collected all sorts of animals including, oddly enough, polliwogs. Of course my kiddos wanted to know what a polliwog was. Please give a small guess as to who might have had the perfect picture book to answer that question...yes, I have THE perfect picture book to describe and share what a polliwog is. Polliwog by Tammy Carter Bronson. Are we knee deep in cheese yet? I think we will be when I share, trying to hold back my silly excitement, that my book is not only autographed but it has a great theme as well. Woohoo...

 

So would you think less of me if sometimes I share a book  just to meet MY needs in the classroom? One guess as to what my goal was with this wonderful read aloud. Hmmm...Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein turned out to be a perfect mentor text at just the exact time I needed it. You just have to love mentor texts.

So proud of all of the book recommendations!

We will continue looking at genre and theme as we work in reading. Lots of great reading!

Now to share a few of our morning messages and head to bed.

  

Off to bed now...Happy Reading my friends!