We are moving right along in Reading and Writing Workshop. We are spending a lot of time learning how to read with a partner. Partners can help us read, talk about what we have read and remember what we were reading about. Here are some pictures of our most recent work.
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| This is part of our Shared Reading work. We use the poems to teach popcorn words, to be able to identify a word and a letter, to learn punctuation, to practice choral reading (a skill that will be needed in later grades), learn our color words, to work with our letter of the week and to learn about poetry. The children loves working with the Wiki Sticks to "circle" words, letters and popcorn words they know. |
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| This is part of our Reading Workshop. The children get two mini lessons during Reading Workshop. During individual reading time they practice the skills they have learned. They use familiar favorite books. During Partner Reading time the children work on reading actual words using leveled readers. This is the bag they bring home on the weekends to practice with you. Believe me, I can tell a difference between the children that practice reading skills at home and those that don't. This child in identifying punctuation marks. He is pointing to a period. He knows what it is called and that it means you stop reading (or the end of the sentence). |
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| This child is practicing using his Super Pointing Finger. This is a Super Power they have that keeps them reading one word at a time and keeps our place in our book. See how he is pointing under the word. He is doing the skill correctly! |
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| This child is practicing reading left to right, top to bottom. He was showing me the top of the page and where we start reading a page. He then moved across the sentence from left to right. |
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| This child was enjoying her new library book. She was trying to read the words (and read most of them). Here she is having difficulty with an unknown word. Snow is a hard word and without knowing the OW rule it is almost impossible to read. We used Lips the Fish (get ready to read and make the first sound) and our Eagle Eye (using our eyes to study the picture to read unknown words). She identified snow in the picture on the left and made the first two sounds in the word (the s and n). She then guessed the word snow. She was correct. Way to use your Super Powers! |
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| This child is demonstrating one-to-one correspondence by pointing to each word while he reads to words. He has memorized this book and can "read" it to me. He know points to each word and is realizing that each set of letter (or words) represents something (an action, description, name, etc.). |
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| During Writing Workshop we have been studying the illustrations of Mo Willams. He does the Pigeon books and the Piggy and Elephant books. We looked closely at the illustrations and noticed lots of different techniques used in the book. We noticed that he uses speech bubbles, words written in all capital letters, exclamation marks, color to set the mood and making the Pigeons eyes smaller as he calmed down. Look at how many of his techniques to create their books. They have come a long way as authors and illustrators. |
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| I am loving the use of words in the speech bubbles. I also liked that he made Pigeon in different muted colors. |
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| More Mo inspired illustrations. I love the correct grip he has on his crayon. |
We have also studied David Shannon as an illustrator and author. Each child is currently working on a book about the first day of Kindergarten that I want to place into their portfolios. We are also going to create a book about our field trip. The children love Writing Workshop and creating books!
