Poetry Cafe

You will notice that there is a poem in your child's homework folder this afternoon.  We are starting Poetry Cafe in our classroom- please see the end of this post for more information regarding this exciting event!

We have very exciting news in Room 3!  We have a brand-new student in our classroom- Hannah B.  We cannot believe that we now have 3 Ryans and 2 Hannahs in our classroom!  Hannah is joining us from Milton, VT and had a wonderful first day!  

In SWR today we introduced our new red word, they.  We also generated words that would fit into the ___ob and ___ox families.  Our WOW word of the week is persistent.  We all agreed that we had to be very persistent when we were learning to ride our bikes for the first time!

We rolled two dice in math today, added them together, and recorded the sum.  We noticed that we had sums of 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 more than sums of 2, 3, 4, 10, 11, and 12 but we haven't quite figured out why that is yet.  We are going to do this again tomorrow and see if we can come up with some possible reasons for this.  We love rolling dice in Room 3 and we're becoming quite good at addition as well. 

In reading we read another chapter of Mr. Popper's Penguins.  Today, we noticed that there are "S's" on the end of Popper and Penguin but they mean different things!  We are noticing so much while we read. In reading groups we started four new books today:
The Little Duck
The Toytown Bus Helps Out
Mother Bear's Scarf
Ben's Jigsaw Puzzle

We are working on many reading strategies including skipping over a word we don't know and going back, reading with expression, and retelling. 

Look at these first graders hard at work during Reading:

We started a new science unit today- Solids and Liquids.  We will learn about solids first, and then liquids.  We began talking about the properties of solids today.

Poetry Café

In an effort to improve reading and fluency phrasing, we are starting an exciting weekly event within our reading program… Poetry Café!  Poetry Café will take place in the classroom as a special celebration.  Each child will take turns sitting at our "café table" sharing his or her poem with the class.

Poetry Café will take place on Friday afternoons from 1:45-2:30.  Each student will choose a single poem (or two short ones) on Monday morning.  We will photocopy the poems for students and they are responsible for bringing them home in their homework folder.  Students should practice reading the poem aloud at home and at school in the days preceding Poetry Café.  The goal is not to memorize the poem!  The goal of reading the poem many times in advance is to improve the ability to read with expression and fluency.  Poetry practice will be required homework each night.

Our goals for this program are to improve reading fluency, to improve public speaking skills, to foster appreciation and awareness of the wonderful poetry in our world and to have fun!  We hope that the children enjoy Poetry Café and that you hear some wonderful poetry being read aloud in your home.

Our very first Poetry Café will be Friday, February 1, 2013.  We love to have parents join us!  Please feel free to drop in for Poetry Café as often as you wish.  Be sure to come prepared with a poem to share with the class.

Thank you for your support!