What a day!

The trip to the theater was lovely!  I was so proud of our kids.  They were able to sit and wait for the performance and were respectful and engaged throughout.  Then we took our walk to lunch and were able to see some cool downtown type things.  For instance the kids spotted many cranes, workers going up the outside of a building to repair the siding and different trees that were growing new leaves.  What a special day. 

Thank you so much to all our drivers for making this adventure possible!  And for sharing the moment with us!  I was struck yesterday by what a nice group of families we have.  Thank you for making my day.

I am also going to put a few things up from yesterday.  Your children are getting to be so aware of documenting their experience.  Often in our day, as we finish something cool the kids will say, "You should put this on our blog!"  I try to update it as much as I can.  Here are a few things they have asked to share with you.

In many parts of our work lately we have been talking about descriptive words and how to give more information to your reader.  This comes up in story writing, when explaining a concept to a friend, in our math equations and so much more.  We do lots of different games and activities to highlight this concept and strengthen our vocabulary awareness.  In this game I wrote out a simple sentence with spaces for adjectives.  We looked at the sentence and agreed that it could stand alone: The dog was eating food.  But then when we began to think of descriptive words the friends could see how much more you could change things with just two more words added to the sentence.  Here are the sentences after they gave possible words:

We talk a lot about painting a picture in your reader's mind.  Here, as you read these four different sentences, you can see how the story in your mind changes with the different word choices.  This is the power of our language.  I think the children are beginning to feel this power.  Each day as we edit our class journal the friends have been pointing out discrepancies more and more.  They are offering new ways to say things so that they are more clear and better represent what we want to convey.  These kids amaze me every day!

Another exciting new possibility is the fact that many friends are feeling their ability to read!  Friends have been taking time in the day to read to a peer.  And this is different to other times in our year, where friends are storytelling while they hold the book.  In this case the friends are sounding out words and reading what is really on the page!  We do this in partnerships or groups so that the children can scaffold each other.  They learn from seeing the words as their friend reads, and they also can help sound out words that someone gets stuck on.  They are so amazed at their new found abilities.  And this is so empowering for them!

Well, there's always more coming in our class!  These children are just so full of wonder, exuberance and life.  More soon!  Love, Jennifer