Daily 5 Projects!

Today was a great day in Room 9! Since last week when some of the kids in our class started working on PIP during Daily 5, many of the other children have been anxiously awaiting the start of their Daily 5 project. Every day they've been asking about what their project will be and when they're going to be able to get started. Today was the day. Two more groups of kids started working on two new Daily 5 projects.

I decided to start these Daily 5 projects for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, projects like these provide kids with purpose and motivation for reading and writing. Each of the projects was tailored to suit a small group of students with similar strengths and needs. For example...

Personal Inquiry Projects (PIP)

The children working on PIP are independent readers and writers who are moving from "learning to read" to the "reading to learn". They are working on building their independence in both reading and writing, learning those life-long learning skills of finding information and asking good questions, and most importantly they are learning that if they are interested in something and want to know more about it, they have the skills to do it. As I watch these kids decide on their topics, ask to visit the library at recess time, take notes, share information, and take their notebooks home at night to keep on learning, I can't help but feel very proud. :)

The Recording Studio

The children that are working on recording some of our picture books for our listen to reading centre are working on solidifying the reading skills that they have. They are building their confidence as readers and working on fluency and expression. Recording books on a digital recorder allows them to hear themselves read, and gives them an opportunity to try again if they want to do something differently or if they make a mistake. Burning their recordings to CDs for the other children to listen to provides them with purpose and motivation to make their recordings their very best work. I stood back and watched these children work today and overheard a wonderful conversation between them where they made a plan, talked honestly and respectfully about how the recording went, and gave each other advice. It was one of those moments that I wish I had recorded!

Newspaper Project

The group of children working on the newspaper project are working on solidifying some of their writing skills like ensuring that their writing makes sense to other people, spelling high frequency words correctly, using their 'voice' in their writing and building confidence as writers. The are so excited to share thier newspaper with other people when it's finished. As I watched one of these kids sit and write out a list of questions for an interview (during choice time) and then take our digital camera, her reporter badge, and her notebook and head to the office to ask for an interview with Mrs. Caldwell I couldn't help but smile. Earlier in the day I'd watched this same child struggle and ask for help with a writing task... a little motiviation and a chance to feel very important made a huge difference.

Today the some of the grade 1 stared a project and it was newspaper. We had to talk to people and record or write what they said. We are taking pictures and put them in the newspaper.- Sydney R

I love watching kids learn to love learning. It makes my day :) Today during choice time more children chose to read, blog, play a word work game, work on their Daily 5 project, and write in their writer's notebook than chose to play Lego or with blocks... I think that is AWESOME.

Number 99...

Today I'm posting by myself as the kids of Room 9 are off to Music class. Our afternoon was very busy and we ran out of time to post together. However, as always, they were very clear about what today's post should say. :) Here is what the kids wanted me to tell you:

This morning during Daily 5 we took a look at a few pieces of writing that some of the children are working on for our next Mixbook. In order for us to be able to see the writing and revise/edit as a group, I took a picture of a few students' notebooks with my iPad and connected it to our projector. We opened the pictures in the Glow Colouring app (a word work favourite!) and we were able to write on top of the student writing to highlight, fix, and add. It was very interactive and the kids loved to see their writing on the big screen :) Here is a picture of one of the pieces we looked at. ------->

In this piece we were able to see that the author was using language that made it sound more like a poem than a story, they were using some WOW! Words (descriptive words) and that they had asked a couple of questions. This group revision/edit was valuable to both the student who's work was on the wall, as well as to other students who were working on similar pieces.

The second thing the kids wanted me to share with you is about an art project that we've started during our inquiry time. We are learning about different states of matter and we have had many discussions about changing from one state to another (solid to liquid, liquid to gas, etc). One of the student in our class talked about a crayon maker that she got for Christmas. She explained that you can melt crayons (solid to liquid) and make new ones. This reminded me of an art project I saw on Pinterest where crayons were attached to a piece of foam core and heated to melting with a blow dryer. Of course, the kids had to try it. They busily peeled broken crayons during indoor recesses last week, and today we did step one of the project... choosing our crayons. Here's a picture: ----->

Tomorrow we'll attach them to our board and blow dry. I have a feeling it's going to get warm in here!

Just one more note... This post is our 99th blog post of the school year!  Be sure to check out our special edition 100th post tomorrow :)

This morning...

This morning I was greeted by one of my grade one boys who had come to school early because his older sister is involved in an early morning club. He asked if he could come into our classroom instead of watching in the gym. I invited him in and told him he could find something to do as I prepared for our day. After a few minutes, and not even a peep from him, I turned around and saw this:

Out of all of the things he could've chosen to do, he quietly took out his writer's notebook and wrote and wrote and wrote. What a great way to start the day :)

-Mrs. Malkoske

all about today

Today we worked on our comic Cole Tristan Tyson Alexander Peyton and Jonathon are makeing A comic. We are makeing all of the carachacters first we are allmost done the cover.  We finished our me on the map. Tristan said we would get 20 pages of paper and we allmost did of our comic.
-Cole, Jonathon, Peyton

What Makes Good Writing?

As we get ready for portfolio conferences, the children in our classroom have been reflecting on some of their learning in reading, writing, math and our inquiry projects. Today our focus was on writing. I asked the kids the question, "What Makes Good Writing?" Here is what they said:
Tristan - Start with the date.
Cameron - Neat, small printing.
Peyton & Madeline - Use periods, exclamation marks, commas, and question marks in the right places.
Cole - Write the details.
Taylor - Write on the lines.
Jonathon & Lindsay - It makes sense.
Jolene - Uppercase letters at the beginning of a sentence
Kendall & Sydney R - Finger spaces!
Rhianna - Do the title.
Kaspir - No scribbling, use letters.
Sydney R - Try to sound out the words.
Kendall - Don't use bad words.
Jadyn - Read it over.
Peyton - Then we looked at the Writing Continuum and compared our writing to the samples. We used our TWAS to match the writing on the writing continuum.

Here are some more things that help to make our writing even better:
Ashley - Make all the words uppercase in a title
Aliegha & Jolene - The picture has to go with the writing. They have to match.
Aliegha - Add feelings to your writing.