Thoughts about Rules by Cynthia Lord: Keep or Kill?

This week in school, we started a new read aloud: Rules, by Cynthia Lord. Over the course of the week, I collected students' thoughts about the book. Today, we looked at all the thoughts from this week and decided which ones we'd keep and which ones we'd "kill." The decision was based on whether or not the idea felt like something that would lead to a good discussion. If it was something that felt more like a fact from the book or a small idea that wouldn't lead to much conversation, we "killed" the idea. Check out our list of thoughts and see what we kept and what we killed. (If we were on the fence about keep it or kill it, we kept it just to be safe.)

Too Cute to Resist

Here we are, working on 10,000 Charts.
:)

10,000 Charts/Cuteness

Self Portraits

Hi Everybody,


As the class was lining up for science today, Sascha L. asked me, "Has our classroom ever been this messy, other than when we did clay sculptures or the mural?"  No, it has not.  Let me tell you, though, it's a beautiful mess!  Our room is positively covered with books, papers, markers, colored pencils, Post-It Notes, tape and more books.  It's glorious!


Last week, students brought in a pile of their favorite things to read.  They marked favorite excerpts, brainstormed their favorite characters, authors and settings, and thought about why they like the things they like.  Today, they began to synthesize all of that work into a reading reaction where they are the text.  Their work is to look across everything they collected and think about what it tells them about themselves as a reader, which will ultimately tell them about themselves in general.  They're analyzing data.


The reaction itself is a way for students to process, not present their thoughts.  As they begin to build their reading brains on paper, connections and new ideas appear, and they get recorded, too.  Halfway through their work today, I asked how many people felt like they'd discovered something new about themselves, and nearly every hand went up.  We're in the middle of a beautiful, messy process!  Check it out:

Self Portraits

Camping!

Drop Box

Why do People Write?

Here are some notes from one of our first conversations about writing.

Why do people write?

It’s fun!

To entertain

To express themselves

To remember/to remind

To share ideas, experiences, and memories

To share knowledge/info/thoughts/emotions/feelings

To let people know what’s going on

So others can experience what the writer did

To make $

To share life lessons

To warn someone

To create something new

To communicate

To inspire

To calm yourself

To process or figure something out, to think

To make people think

To learn

To convince

To help others

So as a writer, what do you want your reader to experience, regardless of your genre choice?  We want them...

To understand (understand=topic)

To get pulled in

To feel like they’re actually there

To feel what you hoped they would feel

To understand or feel your purpose (feel=purpose)

To think about the message

How the heck do we do that?!

Pick things that are personal to you.

Think about what’s happening now…write about what’s relevant to your readers.

Write from your heart.

What's in that heart?

You!

What you care about

Memories

Emotion

Too Pretty to do Homework?

Hi all,


I can't help myself from sharing this with you.  Forever 21 and JCPenny recently put shirts on their shelves that say "Allergic to Algebra" and "I'm too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me."  This is abhorrent!  They've since pulled the shirts, but I still think this petition is worth signing.  We will talk about this at school on Monday.


Take care,


Lauren

K-Buddies

Here are some photos from our first day with our kindergarten buddies!  The students' job was to show them the ropes in the cafeteria and yard.  It's unbelievably sweet to watch the very cool fifth graders warm up to the tiny kindergartners!

September 14, 2011