Story Studies, Changes to Our Community, Experts, and MORE!

Happy Monday!

Here is a recap of what the Hardworking Journalists accomplished last week:

Gardening

We finished documenting the story elements for Little Red Riding Hood.

 As we continue our story study, we read Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China, by Ed Young.  This was a version that most students were unfamiliar with, which contrasts how many students have had a past experience with the Brother's Grimm version, retold by Trina Schart Hyman.  We documented the story elements that the students could identify in the book.

We have also been working on our own brainstorms of Story Elements.  Thank you to all the families that have been able to come in and support the students as they sound out their words, get feedback from their peers, and work on their multiple drafts!

As a class, we practiced equation writing out on our blacktop.  Friends were asked to work with a partner to generate an equation, and then find the solution with a pictorial representation.  This seemed to be a simple enough task, but friends found a few roadblocks to complete this task, including selecting which numbers to include in their equation that were reasonable (10 vs 1,000, 000, 000), keeping their work organized instead of drawing over someone else's work, checking their work to make sure they have an accurate drawing, as well as compromising how to share the workload instead of completely taking over the task or feeling like your partner is not helping you.  So much to think about!

Thank you to Seng for being our Family Reader this week and sharing the story of Stellaluna, as well as providing the students the chance to enjoy a treat the fruit bats enjoy very much: plantains!

We met with our Buddies in their classroom to enjoy reading with them as the rain poured.  It was a very cozy time.  Check out the student's reflection notes in our Discussion Notes Binder!

This week, we celebrated another friend's birthday!  We sang Happy Birthday, "Happy New Year," gave special birthday messages, played Red-Light, Green-Light, Doggy, Doggy, Where's Your Bone, and enjoyed a very tasty vegan cupcake!  This was also, a special moment to say goodbye to this very special member of our community, as her family has moved on and are starting at a new school in their newly purchased home.  We all wish them the best of luck and send them all of our love!

We ended our week with our expert author and illustrator, Lori Mitchell, coming to talk to us about her book, Different, Just Like Me.  Prior to her coming to our class, the class had read her book and generated some interview questions for her to answer.  We were so lucky to learn from her about all the steps it takes to get her book onto the shelves for us to enjoy and to hear about her inspiration and process in writing.  Check out our Discussion Notes Binder to read more about it!

 

Here she showed us the story board of her book prior to publishing.

She shared with us a photo of her daughter, who grew up with vitiligo, who inspired the making of the story, Different, Just Like Me.

She even showed us how she made multiple drafts of the illustrations and of her writing!

Thanks for visiting us, Lori Mitchell!

And thank you for checking out the blog!
Love, Gaby