The Tale of Despereaux

 

Welcome to the story of Despereaux Tilling, a mouse who is in love with music, stories, and a princess named Pea. It is also the story of a rat called Roscuro, who lives in the darkness and covets a world filled with light. And it is the story of Miggery Sow, a slow-witted serving girl who harbors a simple, impossible wish. These three characters are about to embark on a journey that will lead them down into a horrible dungeon, up into a glittering castle, and, ultimately, into each other's lives. What happens then? As Kate DiCamillo would say: Reader, it is your destiny to find out.

The past few weeks we have been thoroughly enjoying Kate DiCamillo's novel, "The Tale of Despereaux".  We were hooked on each chapter - each page as this story unfolded.  If you have not yet read this delightful tale of a mouse, a princess, a rat and a serving girl, the BUGS of Room 18 highly recommend you pick up a copy and start today!

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When is a Turkey Not Just a Turkey?

When it is a Turkey Glyph!!  We made turkeys that tell about our Thanksgiving celebrations and traditions (well, mainly what we EAT!)  Check out what we are doing for the holiday!

 

You have to follow the code...

Make sure you include all your favorite things...like pumpkin pie, and mashed potatoes...But don't put green feathers unless you like green bean casserole!
(remember, Moms will see this at conferences!  They might hold you to it!)
Don't forget to tell us if you're staying home or going somewhere else for the holiday by making your feet yellow or red!

I didn't see a single turkey with closed eyes...guess everyone likes dessert! 
I'll be eating my gravy in the dining room! 
I'll take extra helpings of corn and dinner rolls, please! 

Just white meat for me, please!  And hold the gravy! 

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 

 

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Gratitude

With Thanksgiving just a few days away, we recently took a look at the word 'gratitude' and talked about what it means to be grateful.  We read a book about gratitude and decided to share what we are all thankful for.  While I only have room here to share a few of the great Gratitude Writings our class authored this week, the rest are in the hallway for parent conferences.  We sure hope you take a moment to stop and read all the amazing blessings we all have in our lives that make us full of gratitude! 

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AR Buttons!

Congratulations to Maya and Abigail for earning their Five Point AR buttons!!

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What Teachers Do On the Weekend

Ever wonder what your teacher does on the weekend?
 Last weekend, I spend way too many hours in the classroom organizing BOOKS!!  

 

The students will tell you that I cleaned out the Closet of Death so I could access our leveled guided reading books easier.

 

Which meant all the craft supplies had to find a new home (and get organized as well).

Which meant our reading books needed to find new homes.  (Let's hope this cabinet is sturdy!)

But we did all that so we could use our awesome new book bins!!  Mrs. Koehn bought these cool book bins with some of the funds from the Drive One 4UR School fundraiser.  Each student has their own bin where they can keep their library books as well as other leveled books recommended by Mrs. Koehn!  We are all so excited about these bins!

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Coincidence?

 

Sophie and her new book.  Hmm....  :)

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Using the Tools

Jose was practicing his parts of speech with a grammar activity today.  He had to color words by whether they were nouns, verbs or adjectives.  Jose had no problem deciding what part of speech the words were, but first there were a few words that he had trouble sounding out.  He grabbed a scrap piece of paper and began fish hooking the words into syllables to decode what the vowels would say in each word.  I watched as he carefully wrote, fish hooked, pounded and sounded out each word with confidence.  His eyes lit up when he read each word and then he happily colored it the appropriate color!  Way to go Jose for using your tools to figure out hard words!!

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Our Writing Process

We have been working during the first couple months of school, to learn the writing process.  We have practiced each step along the way and produced our first story this week.  We now know that a good story...

...starts with an idea...

Then it's a good idea to practice your story out loud to a friend (or to yourself).

Drawing a quick sketch of what happens at the beginning, middle and end of the story helps us organize our thoughts.  Rehearsing these steps with a partner makes sure we didn't leave out any details.

Now we start drafting our story.  This draft will be really rough, so we leave  blank lines to give us room for changes later.

After reading our first draft over with a friend, we make suggestions for each other.  We might point out some missing details, or ask for clarification about a part. We might compliment the plot, but suggest some adjectives to help make the characters appear in my head, too. Then it's back to make changes, additions and sometimes even to take parts out.

Along the way, if we get stuck on how to spell a word, we do our best to sound it out first.  We even take the time to fish hook the word to make sure it says what we want it to say (we don't want to write "supper" when we mean to write "super"!) Then we ask three friends to confirm or correct our spelling.  When we have it correct, we add it to our personal dictionaries so we know how to spell it the next time!

After a few revisions and lots of work with a friend or two, we are ready to make a very neat, very perfect final copy!  We don't skip lines anymore and we use our very best handwriting for this copy!  Sometimes we might even type our stories into the computer to share!

We take time to make a detailed illustration to go along with our story as a picture or as the cover to our book.  Then we put it all together for publication to share with others!

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Making Ten

We have been learning a lot of math strategies that all seem to involve making ten, an easy number, out of more difficult numbers.  This week, with the help of Prestyn's grandma, Ms. Georgia, we used q-tip painting to show various ways to make ten with ten frames!  We really enjoyed this hands-on math and the visual picture helps us to learn our math facts faster! 

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Author Visit

Mr. Alan St. Jean, the author of four picture books and four chapter books came to visit us at the Early Elementary on Tuesday.  

 

He talked with us about the writing process, about how long it takes him to write a book and where he gets his ideas from. 

He showed us how his books all have a problem and a solution and that making the solution unpredictable is part of what makes a great children's book. 

 

He showed us some of the early sketches of his character, Ralphie, and we learned that even illustrators make a lot of drafts before they make the perfect drawing!

Mr. St. Jean uses the same writing process we are learning!  He starts with an idea, practices his story (even drawing a quick sketch of the beginning, middle and end sometimes) and writes many drafts with revisions before he is done with the story! 

We learned a lot from this author and hope that someday we have our names on the cover of a book too! 

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Blogging with the BUGS

on desember 25 is cherismis i wont a ds game i am  exsitid for cherismis -by Prestyn



I was a vampire for hollowen. My baby sister was born in janawary 19.I was the first baby in my family.I Iive with my mom, my dad, my brother, my gramma,my grampa,my big sister.I love techer.I love myself. - by Sophie

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Blogging by the BUGS!

Hi I am Emma.A and last night I had lots of fun .I went to my friends house.His name is calub.My cousin Presly came over to his house.I got to go trick or treating with them.I was a monster for Halloween.I had fun!We had lots of candy!Today I am going trick or treating a gen.

 

My name is Tyler i went trick or treating last night with my friend,s Jack Samy and airin.And i also went with my sister named Ava.

 

October 31 was Hallaween. It raind last year and this year. We had lots of diffrint costrum`s. My farit thing abowt Hallaween is to see all the costrum`s - by Maya

 

on october 31 was Halloween. i was a vampier.  By Prestyn

 

Yesterday on Halloween We Had  A Party  It Was Fun We Watched Something About Ice Age MeltDown My Faverite Character is Digeo Because He Is A Tiger. - by Jaylen

 

 

 

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Computer Lab - a Sneak Peek

We use computers a lot in our classroom.  We use them at math stations every day to practice our math concepts and facts.  We use them to take AR tests for reading comprehension assessment.  But we love to go to the lab on Friday mornings and just have some fun!  We can play any of the educational games on the school computers or we can use the time to blog!  Our computer lab has 26 computers, so one student gets to sit at the teacher's desk so we can all join in the fun!  (Mrs. Koehn doesn't mind!)

Despite having been the computer lab teacher several years ago, Mrs. Koehn feels pretty useless when we are in the lab!  We all help each other navigate to the games we want to play, help figure out the math problem that will get us to the third level and even remind each other where to find the log in and password to get to the class blog!  We are all so techie, we don't even need a teacher (most of the time!)

We love to play Sumdog with our friends!  This game lets us practice our math and reading skills while playing against kids in our class, our town or around the world!

Some of us like to do the word find games! 

While others of us like to put our own words out on the blog!  Today, Prestyn helped Maya to spell "different".  He's been working on learning how to spell that word for the spelling test this week and he was eager to share his knowledge!!

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Happy Halloween!

On Thursday afternoon, our room transformed itself from a room full of BUGS to a room full of werewolves, swamp things, minions and vampires!  Here's a look at our Halloween costume party!

Prestyn the vampire, Dylan the Knight in Shining Armor, Cameron the werewolf and Orrin the dinosaur.

 

Tyler and Ian were ninjas, Billy the spider, Abigail the cat and Maya the monkey!

 

Kaylee the rock star, Emma K. a bumblebee, Emma A. a crazy monster, Kolleana a rock star and Zoie a bumblebee!

Evan was a vampire alien, Jaylen as Pikachu and Hunter was Robin Hood.

 

Macy was a pirate (see her great pirate face?  Arrrggg!), Teagen the minion, Sophie the vampire and Avery was Catwoman.

Sydney the mermaid, Jose the ninja and James was Swampthing!

Despite the pouring rain, we enjoyed our parade through the classrooms and our party afterwards!

 

We played some Halloween BINGO and listened to the Monster Mash!

 

We ate ourselves silly and had some great laughs with friends!

A huge thanks to all the parents, grandparents and friends who helped bring items for our party, get us into costume and sing along with the Ghostbusters theme song!  We had a great day today and we couldn't have done it without all your help!

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