Week 1 in the Books!

Well, we have the first week of school under our belts with lots accomplished! I need to apologize for the mistake in my email address in the letter I sent home. There should have been a period between my first and last name. The correct address is:  joanna.jackson@ed.amdsb.ca, please feel free to contact me at any time.

Reading

We spent some time speed dating the books in my classroom and also went to the library so everyone has picked their first book for the Novel Study Tic-Tac-Toe. We have started to establish our independent reading routines and I couldn't be happier with these kiddos and their reading stamina!  Not all kids read at the same rates and to accommodate this everyone will be setting their own goals for their book completion which will be established in our daily reading conferences. We went over the Tic-Tac-Toe reading response assignment and co-created the success criteria and reading strategies that we will be using for assessment purposes. 78 got the ball rolling and then 8D gave their input. The co-creating of assessment tools will be a regular practice this year as I want the students in my room to be assessment literate and really own their learning.

Tic Tac Toe Choice Board Success Criteria

Co-created with 78 & 8D September 5, 2019.

• Include specific details from the text in your responses 
• Character’s names
• Places
• Plot details
• ALL parts of the tic-tac-toe prompt are included in your response
• Use proper conventions (spelling, punctuation, complete sentences)
• Evidence of your own thinking (making connections)

Reading Strategies 

• Jot notes down as you read
• Make sure you go back to the text when you are working on your responses
• Make sure you understand what you are reading
• Ask people for advice 

78 getting their read on!

Writing

In the world of writing, we have started to work on generating ideas as we work our way through various quickwrites that have had the kids looking inward to find inspiration for writing. We talked about the fact they each have stories that only they can tell. We will be starting the year with narrative writing and in our first lap around the narrative track, we will be working on short personal memoirs. We will be taking four laps around the narrative track with each writing assignment getting gradually more in-depth.

Students of 8D sharing their writing with each other after a quickwrite.

Media Literacy

We have just scratched the surface of media literacy as we started to talk about the creation of vision boards. I had them do an internet search as a minds-on and we discussed tips to do better internet searches. We will be looking at various techniques for the creation of graphic texts next week now that we have all the iPads up and running. Students will be setting both academic and personal goals for the term and creating graphic texts based on these goals using the medium of their choice.