September 7th, 2016

9/7/2016

Today the students and I started with some Board Work. As students come into our class, they are encouraged to choose their "smart seat" for the day. Once seated they look to the whiteboard and begin Board Work - small tasks meant to get the class started and engaged. Today was Wonder Wednesday! Students were asked to consider the Wonder-of-the-Day from Wonderopolis. Today's wonder was: "What is the weather like on other planets?" We completed today's wonder as a "Think, Pair, Share." Students first brainstorm their ideas at their desk. They then record their favourite idea on a post-it. Afterwards, students are encouraged to pair up and share what they wrote. Finally, students who are comfortable are encouraged to share with the class. I loved the ideas we had today. I was really pleased to see that everyone recorded something; a great way to start Wonder Wednesday!

Today we also began working in our Writer's Notebooks. These books will be used throughout the year for students to work on different writing prompts. Generally they will be short paragraphs or stories about themselves. Almost like a Journal. Today we organized our notebooks: we wrote a title, a dedication page, and a table of contents. Then we started our first idea page of the year. The idea pages are 5-6 pages completed at the front of the notebook that students can refer back to throughout the year if they get writer's block. Our page today was: "This summer my feet have been..." Students traced their feet and are filling in their feet and the surrounding page with small descriptions and pictures of where they have been. Later this year, students can turn to this page to get a quick idea of something they can write about. We will have more time this week to complete this page. However, I have asked students to decorate the covers of their Notebooks by Monday. Students can decorate them however they like: drawing, pictures, etc. They should look like and represent them and their creativity in some way.

Today we also created some Learner Profile People. This is an activity that allows students to spend some time thinking about how they think and learn. By creating the people, students can then see who in the class has similar interests and learning styles to them. We used the following slideshow to create our people: