Chalk Talk with Ms. Holt: read to self

Sunday, August 27, 2017

My goal is to give a weekly recap each week. This blog post will be posted sometime over the weekend. During this weekly post, I will update you on some (it would be impossible to recap everything :) ) happenings in room 15 and give any reminders or announcements.

We are off to such a great start. The first graders are getting well acquainted with each other. We are getting our routine and procedures established and building a great classroom community. One of our favorite times of day is circle time where we get to share something about ourselves. This week we did a "get to know you activity" called "Find someone who likes" They loved interacting with each other during this time.

We have started learning the basics for our "Read to Self" daily reading routine (called Daily 5). We learned that here are three ways to read. We can 1. Read the pictures. 2. Read the words. or 3. Retell the story. We liked practicing these ways. We 've learned that is is important to practice reading so that we can come better readers and because it is fun to read. Reading can take us on adventures and calm our brains.

We have learned and practiced our jobs during Read to Self. We enjoyed getting comfy around the room for this!

In math, we worked on using different strategies to count objects. Students were instructed to pick their favorite way to count and then they were challenged to find more ways to count. Here are the kiddos in action.

Here are some strategies we came up with as a group!

We learned new games like Monster Squeeze and Penny Dice. Also, we received our math "tool kits" this week. We will be adding to it throughout the year. We were able to add our Pattern Block Template and use it to make some fun drawings.

Other highlights of our week include:

Learning about different families and drawing portraits of our family
Reading bucking filling books and learning about being a bucket filler and not a bucket dipper
Generating ideas for our writing by drawing/writing things we love and things we like to do
Meeting up with our 4th grade buddies in Ms. Appelbaum's class
Learning 2 of our 5 rules (Rule #1: Follow directions quickly. Rule #2: Raise your hand for permission to speak)

We had our first library check out! Please help your student remember to bring back their library books (everyone has two) every Tuesday.

I hope you enjoyed looking at some of the highlights of our week! I think the most exciting part of our week was the eclipse. I will be sharing pictures of that soon! As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please contact me at 573-214-3290 or aholt@cpsk12.org

Now parents, hang with me! I promise this is good stuff and will help your child be successful readers. The more you know, the more you can help them at this task! :)

I introduced this lesson by bringing in a bag of my shoes. The kiddos loved this and found it helpful to relate good fit shoes to good fit books. Let's break down each letter now...

I : I look at each book inside and out. Just like our shoes, when we are deciding to wear them or buy them, we take a good look at them. We should do this with our books too. When we get them off of shelves or out of libraries, we should take a good look at them.

P: Purpose: Why do I want to read this book? Taking another look at my shoes, why do I want to wear this shoe? I'm going for a run so should I wear my summer wedges? Probably not. If I want to learn facts about sharks, should I read a book about a character named Ralph going to the park? Probably not!

I: Interest: Am I interested in this topic or book? I mentioned to my students, you will not find soccer shoes in my bag of shoes because I do not like soccer, but you will find my running shoes in there because I love to run. They are usually pretty dirty too because I like to run on the trail. Now parents, this might be one of the most important parts because I always want your kids to be reading books that they are interested in. If they are not interested in a book or a topic, let them put it back and pick a better fit book. Reading should be enjoyable so lets make it just that!

C: Comprehend: Can I understand and remember what I read? Parents, this is the biggest misconception when a child is reading, and especially learning to read. When a child is reading a book, they should not only be able to read the words of the book, but also understand what they read. Just because they can read most of the words on the page does not necessarily mean that they understand what they are reading. If you are overseeing them reading (which I recommend that you do), please ask them simple questions to make sure they are understanding what they read. During this part, I tried on Noelle's cute little sandal and we all decided that even though I really liked it, it was NOT a good fit for me!

**Side note: Many of my students checked out Magic Tree House books from the library this week. These books are probably not good fit books for most students at this point in their reading development. However, I know they are very fun books to read as a family!!

K: Know: Do I know most of the words? We want books to be challenging enough to push students. We want them to know most of the words but not fly through every page! This will help them grow as independent readers.

I know this blog post was extremely long but I hope you found it very helpful as it is filled with useful information. As always, please let me know if you have any additional questions! Your support is greatly appreciated!

Here are a few fun pictures of your kiddos practicing Read to Self around the room!