Describing the Setting

We have been working very hard on describing the setting of our stories this week.  Our favorite was The Relatives Came.

After we identified the setting was the house we used our 5 senses to describe it.  Here is what we came up with....

I made each student tell why they described it that way.  So when they said that the house was soft the students said that they saw a rug in the kitchen and it looked soft.  They also said they could smell dinner in the house. Another student came up and pointed in the book to where the family was eating dinner.  Because this was the first time we did an activity like this some of the describing was hard but we worked through it as a class and I was very happy with the end product.

Beefing up Writing Conventions

Last week I noticed that many of my kiddos were struggling with capital letters at the beginning of sentences, writing in lower case letters, and using spaces.  So what I have decided to do is beef up my morning messages to allow students to practice some of these skills. I am going to start each morning meeting message like this...

Then I am going to have students complete the sentence and then add 2 or 3 more sentences.  While writing the sentences we will focus on using our capital letters at the beginning of the sentence and putting spaces between the words. Time to bring out the jumbo spaceman.

My goal is to use some of the simple lessons from Toying with Writing and Toying with Writing Too to keep students interested and engaged.

Friday Progress Reports

I got this idea from a co-worker a couple of years ago and where it is time consuming it has many benefits.  On Friday I send home a Weekly Progress Report with each of my students.  It informs the parents about student behaviors from the week.  There is also a place at the bottom for me or the parents to comment and sign.  Through out the year I change the expectations depending on things we are working on as a class and our county expectations.

Like I said doing a report for each student is sometimes difficult but being able to communicate with parents on a weekly basis about behavior allows for them to reinforce positive behaviors at home and keeps them informed as to what is going on in the classroom.  I have had great success with this the past 3 years.

Adding Some Color

So this morning while I was trying to figure out what to have my parent volunteer do I came across my stained glass pumpkin file and decided to add some color to our classroom.

My kiddos had so much fun making them.

Here is what they looked like hanging on the window.

Want to make your own.  Here are the pages to copy!!