Book Club Discussions- 4.27.2012

Last Friday, we finished our first goals for our current book clubs. Before meeting to discuss the books, however, we spent about 8 minutes generating some thick and thin questions to fuel our discussion of the books. While we certainly were not limited to these question stems, we used these question cards to help generate thick questions:  http://www.lauracandler.com/filecabinet/literacy/PDFLC/qcards.pdf.

So how are our book club discussions structured? Well, book club members take turns leading the discussion by being the discussion director, and they use this guide to help keep the book club on track: http://www.lauracandler.com/filecabinet/literacy/PDFLC/director.pdf. (To fit our needs for this discussion, however, we skipped steps 2 and 4.)  

Check out the video below that I (Mrs.Allen) captured as a snapshot of a few of these amazing discussions: 

Book Club "Story Cube" Discussions

Book Clubs- setting first reading goals & sharing predictions

On Wednesday, October 19, we previewed eight different books, so we could begin book clubs on Friday. For each book, we read the back cover, read the first couple pages, checked for comprehension using the 5-finger rule, and ranked the books #1-8 based on which ones seemed the most interesting to each of us--with comments to explain why we ranked the books the way we did.

On Friday, we formed our book clubs based on our top 3 choices and independently recorded predictions about what our book would be about in our reading logs; then we met with others in our book club for the first time to share predictions and make our first reading goals.

In the videos below, you'll find us discussing our predictions and making our first reading goals. The last video features all of us beginning to read our new book club books!

**Note: the videos are in their roughest form and have not been edited. The purpose is to document our learning, share the conversations, and spread the excitement we felt meeting with book clubs in our classroom for the first time of the year!

Learning Highlights 10/10-10/21

Math
While we will be reviewing many, many prior concepts, these are the main concepts we are focusing on:

• more practice with adding & subtracting decimals
• multiplying decimals
• data & landmarks
• probability 
• rounding & estimating

To watch an interactive video on any of the above math concepts, go here and type in the concept in the search box in the upper right hand corner. 

Communication Arts

• making connections during Read-to-Self 
• text-to-self
• text-to-text
• text-to-world
• CLICK HERE to learn more about these connections!
• previewing novels for Book Clubs beginning the week of 10/17-10/21
• letter writing
• We will be writing letters to our pen pals in Mr.Malany's class in Kenton, Ohio, this week!
• spelling 
• We will spend time practicing our spelling words on Spelling City.
• Oreo sculpture "how-to" second drafts
• verbs 
• action verbs
• linking verbs
• helping verbs 
• Here's a verb video we'll be watching to learn more about verbs:

Science 

• cooking in the kitchen with Chef Rob on Thursday, 10/13
• working in the greenhouse with Farmer Curtis on Thursday, 10/20
• measuring the mass of Oreos as an extension of our O.R.E.O. project
• separating the hydrogen and oxygen atoms from water in a lab
• reviewing what we've learned so far about matter in a "Find Someone Who" activity; quiz will occur two days after review (specific date TBA)
• mobile science van special activity on Thursday, 10/13

Health

• "Don't Meth with Me" presentation on Wednesday, 10/12 to learn the harmful effects of meth and its shocking prevalence in Missouri and immediate surrounding areas
• counselor visit on Friday, 10/14
• Sometime during the week of 10/17-10/21, we will be watching the Family Life and Safety videos.

Other 

• On Tuesday, October 11, we learned what we had in common with the fellow classmates in our team; we will be using these commonalities to generate a team name to help us improve team spirit and cooperation for cooperative learning activities to come! 
• On Friday, October 14, we worked in our teams to develop our team names. All but a couple teams finished finalizing their team name.
• On Wednesday, October 19, we will be going on our field trip to the art museum!
• On Thursday morning, October 20, we will be going to the Health Fair.