We're Published!

     Wow, the weeks just keep going by faster and faster!  Last week, we worked really hard on learning our poems for the poetry read.  We also shared our informational books with the kindergarten and first graders.  Our second graders were so excited to read their work!  Due to popular request, I have scanned the books and put a link below so you may read them.  We only have a black and white scanner so I apologize for not being able to see the pictures clearly.  More books will continue to be added to this link below.  

Informational Books 

Here are some pictures of the afternoon class sharing their books with the first graders. 

 

   This week we started on a fiction book based on the If You Give a Mouse a.... books.  We will post those when we get them done!

     Here is the link to this week's homework.  Don't forget to practice your poems too!

Homework 5/3/13

We hope to see you on Thursday, May 9th at 2:15pm for our Poetry Read! 

Celebrating Authors

I am so excited to finally be able to say we have "published" our informational books!  Our authors are very happy and can't wait to read their book to anyone interested!  I have posted a few pictures of the books below!  These are books from the afternoon class.  The morning class students are still putting their finishing touches on the books.  The children worked so hard researching and writing the information in their books.  They are very proud of them!

  Sydney's Goldfish Book

 Crishaun's Snake Book

 Robby's Tarantuala Book

 Alyssa's Shark Book

 

Here is a link to this week's homework: Homework 4 19 13

Don't forget  to practice your poems too!

Weekly Update

Wow, what a busy week!  It is hard to believe that we have less than 40 days of school left!  The morning reading class Skyped with South Dakota this week!  They only had 7 kids in their class and all of the children lived on ranches!  We thought it was so cool that all the children had their own horse!  On Thursday, the children took a "listening quiz" on the information we learned from our South Dakota friends.  They took the quiz using an Ipad app called Socrative.  After the children answered a question, it told them immediately if they were correct! 

In the afternoon class, we finished our research and began writing our informational book.  We hope to be finishing the book up by the end of this week.  I can't wait for you to see them.  The children have been so excited to share all the information they learned!

A few reminders for this week:   Monday (4/8) at 9am is our Awards Assembly

                                                     Wednesday(4/10) at 2pm is Early Release

Below is a link for this week's homework:

Homework for 4/5/13

 

Hope everyone has a wonderful week!  Enjoy the warm weather!

Happy Spring!

I hope everyone had a wonderful spring break!  It is nice to see that the weather is finally starting to warm up!  The next eight weeks are going to fly by and will be filled with lots of learning! This week we will be working on our informational books in writing.  We have a little more research to do and then we will start writing what we learned in a book.  In reading, we will read a book about the water cycle to help the children connect reading and science. 

Before break, our afternoon reading class helped the first graders research using the computer.  They were quite the experts and really helped the first graders navigate the websites.  The first graders used the information they learned to help write their own informational books.  Below are a few pictures of the children working together!  (The first graders are not shown since I do not have permission from their parents.)

Here is the homework for this week.  It is still due on Friday but is a little shorter!

Homework for 4/1/13

  Have a wonderful week!  

Finally! Pete the Cat!!

In late December, we started studying Pete the Cat!  Like most children, our class fell in love with Pete!  After meeting with the kindergarten and first grade teachers, we decided to write a book about Pete for the younger students in our school.  We used Pete the Cat Saves Christmas as our model to create Pete the Cat Saves Norwood.

To begin the writing process, our morning reading class brainstormed ideas for our author's message and decided we wanted to teach the kindergarteners and first graders to help each other.  The children each picked a place in our town of Norwood and came up with a problem.  In their pages for the book, Pete had to fix the problem. After writing a first draft, we started publishing each page of our story on the Ipads.  The children were so excited about writing on the Ipads!  We found that it was a little harder to illustrate on the Ipad compared to using crayons or colored pencils. 

Take a look at our first published book!   (P.S.  The afternoon class' book is almost finished too!  I hope to have it up later this week!)

Pete the Cat Saves Norwood (By Mrs. Niezgoda's Morning Reading Class)