Pick-A-Party booklet confusion: At the end of today we sent the students home with a green booklet about Pick-A-Parties. After handing them out during dismissal, we realized that there was an address label on the backside with each student's name. While this does not affect the information in the booklet, we can understand this might cause confusion. Please keep the booklet you receive (your child's name or not). We have more copies in the classroom for students we did not get the booklet to. Sign up for Pick-A-Parties begins Sunday, October 21st at 6pm and end on October 26th at midnight.
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Today in Strawberry: We began our day with Cerrito for a song and round of charades about nursery rhymes. After snack and our state spelling test, we continued the nursery rhyme theme during writing workshop.
Our current focus is the revision process in writing. As a way to explore what this looks like we used the classic rhyme of "Humpty Dumpty." After reciting the poem and sharing what images come to mind it was clear the rhyme expressed much more than is contained within this four sentence story. Students shared visions of complex and entertaining character traits of Humpty (of which there are few in the original poem other than the implication that he is breakable and possibly clumsy), an elaborate setting (much more than a just a wall), and all manners in which the King's horses and men tried to put him together again.
Next, in pairs the students were given one line of the poem with the goal of elaborating on that moment, for example telling the story about the first line, "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall." However, not being allowed to complete the poem, they had to stay within the moment of that one line and describe everything not there in the original text. This led to explaining character motivation (why he was on the wall), describing setting elements (what the wall was made of and the surroundings), character interaction (other characters being introduced), and much more.
It was clear that story book illustrations drove much of what our initial class discussion embodied, especially a theme of eggs and frying pans. However, the students' revised lines broke the boundary of the illustrations and led to new ideas and even plot direction. This is the goal for the revisions of the student's own stories next week, to expand and elaborate on characters, setting, vocabulary and plot.
Have a great weekend!
