Maple Room News
A Week in Photographs (5-18 - 5-22)
An Exploration of Penguins
Franklin sitting among handmade penguins.
The penguins watching over morning meeting.
Working hard to illustrate an arctic environment.
Other News in Exploration
Paper Crafts
Looking closely at pictures of planets to make detailed models in Space Center.
Creating playgrounds in the block area.
A mouse stands outside of his new house.
Children make a house for a stuffed mouse in woodworking.
A mouse goes inside of his new house.
Writing Workshop
We also concluded our writing unit this week. We learned that strong writers bring their characters to life by adding how they feel and also adding what the character looked like when feeling a certain way.
On Friday, we go ready to publish our writing by choosing the story that we wanted to share with the world. Then, we used all we know to make our stories come to life and make them easier to read.
First, we had to choose the one story that we really wanted to share. Maybe it’s the most important moment from your life or maybe it’s the story that you worked the hardest on. Once we had our story selected, we had to re-read it. Then, we thought about adding details to different parts so that it was interesting and filled with strong feelings.
Reading Workshop
We concluded our unit: Readers are Resourceful. We spent this week focusing on new things that we can do with our partners.
Partners give each other clues to help solve words. For example, we can give a clue to look at words parts instead of just one letter at a time. Partners can give you clues by pointing to different parts of the word, or whispering to you.
We have been practicing reading without pointing so that our reading sounds more like our talking, and not like a robot. We also have been reading closely and looking for exclamation marks. When you see these, you know that your voice should change to show that you have strong feelings. Partners can help each other read parts more smoothly they can make their voices sound excited or scared or surprised.
Readers don’t just finish a book and move onto another one. You read your books a few times over trying out different things. You can read through your book the first time trying to get your tricky words right, you can reread a second time trying to make your voice sound smooth, and you can reread a third time looking for places that are fun and interesting that you want to share with your reading partner.
Reading friends meet together to make plans for rereading. We can meet before we read and talk about why we would reread certain books. We decide if we will reread to figure out tricky words, make our reading sound smoother, or to pay attention to the characters or information in the book.
While you are rereading your books, you can make sure your voice matches exactly how the character might sound. To do this, remember to think about what’s happening in the story and how the character feels.
You can practice this partner work with your child!
Sometimes while walking we bite it...
"When you fell, a bit of skin fell off. That means, if we don't put a band-aid on it, your leg will fall off."
"Ok."
"We'll, it's a good thing we're doing this."
Please continue to encourage your children to support, care for, and encourage their peers.