October Has Come and Gone

This week, we began with Genius Hour and beginning to wrap up our narrative polished pieces, then finished our Global Read Aloud book - The One and Only Ivan. I think this is best represented in the video below...This week, we began with Genius Hour and beginning to wrap up our narrative polished pieces, then finished our Global Read Aloud book - The One and Only Ivan. I think this is best represented in the video below...
Next week, we'll continue to polish our narratives as we head into November!! (Sneak peek - reading Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse, using our Readers' Notebooks and WEX writing together...)

Skyping About The One and Only Ivan

This week was full... but our most exciting day was the day we were able to Skype with three classes in Canada (one in each of our classes here!). We asked a couple of questions about The One and Only Ivan, as each of these classes is on the Weebly that was set up to discuss this book, and they are reading the same pages we are each week. However, students really wanted to know more about their schools in general. We found out about recess, having two teachers for the day, French classes, and more!

We also touched base on WHY we were Skyping... it is NOT to "waste class time." It is a valuable use of time, if we are to learn about other kids around the globe. It was impressed upon the class that we need to learn about other people and find out their backgrounds, in order to understand why they do what they do, and in order to avoid conflicts. The stress this week is on communication - give and take.

Included in the week - visualization while reading, asking questions to ourselves about what we have read, writing about what we've read, and we also wrote more for our narrative. In fact, on Friday, we began the prompt that will lead to our polished piece for narrative writing.