1st or 3rd Person

Yesterday and today, in both of my ELA classes, we discussed and defined point of view in regards to 1st person or 3rd person.  We realized that 1st person point of view is the person telling the story that was directly involved.  Almost like they are the STAR of a movie!  3rd person is someone telling the story who is NOT involved in the story.  It's very similar to "watching" a movie as oppsed to "STARRING" in a movie.  Below are som pictures of the activities we did today!!  It was another day of hard work!!!

Rachel's Challenge

This afternoon, we had a school wide assembly challenging our kids to accept Rachel's Challenge and start a chain reaction of kindess.  The presenter was very energetic and got our students pumped up!!!  Ask your child today who Rachel Scott was andYRachel's Challenge is and how they can perform random acts of kindess. "You just may start a chain reaction."- Rachel Scott 

For more info, visit the Rachel's Challenge website.

 

Character Traits

Our Reading lesson today was about identifying character traits for one of the main characters from our book: My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother.  Today we chose to focus on Richie, the older brother.  We created a bubble map with character traits and events from the story to prove our thoughts. We called this contextual evidence ( don't we sound smart :) ). This was done as a whole group lesson.  Tomorrow, my STAR students are going to show off their smarts by doing this activity independently with a new text. 

Happy Reading!

Relationships

Today in class we talked about relationships.  We decided that a good definition for a relationsship is how two people relate to each other and how they get along.  We enjoyed a good book titled My Rotten Red-Headed Older Brother by Patricia Polacco.  This book was about 2 siblings who are always competing with each other and annoy each other. A very big event happened in the book that cause their relationship to change.  The assignment given to my kiddos today was to respond to the text in their Response Notebooks by  describing the relationship between the 2 main characters and to identify the even that caused their relationship to change.  They also had to explain what the new relationship was.  I was really proud of my kiddos today! Everyone worked really hard!

We also touched on character traits as well.  We listened to the book on my favorite interactive website for books: Storyline Online.  You could help your child get better at this school by having them read one of their favorite books and simply talk to them about the main character's relationships with other characters and discuss if anything happened to make them change!!

Happy Reading

Clip Chart E-Book!

Last summer while in one of my many back to school moments, I was searching for a clip chart system that  was more effective.  I wanted the "move your clip" statement to not always mean something negative.  I ran across this site  http://www.newmanagement.com/ebooks/clip_chart.html.  It's an E-Book that explains a new concept on the clip chart: you can actually have your students move UP for good behavior.

It's pretty simple!  Every child starts on Green in the middle ( Ready to Learn ) and can go either up or down depending on their choices.  I love it because it rewards good behavior!!   Sometimes all I had to say was "who gets to 'clip up' today?" and got POSITIVE results from my kids!  Very rarely did my students have to "clip down" to the very bottom ( parent contact--which I had them call as soon as they landed on that part of the clip chart which was colored black ).

Another cool thing about this system is that you could work your way back up if you had to clip down.

I shared this with my team and they all ended up using it! I got lots of compliments!

Hope this helps someone!

I'd love to hear what others are doing?

Teachers tweeting on Twitter!

So, I plan to start using Twitter as a means to have more instant communication with my parents this year. It's free and environmentally friendly...it doesn't use any paper and I still get the message across!!

So.....Follow me on Twitter @Im_MrsWilliams and I'll follow you!!


Happy tweeting!!

Linky Party

Yearn to Learn is having a Linky Party and what better way to get my blog out there?!?  So I will participate.


1.  A blogger who is a "New Kid on the Blog"
Head over and check out my friend Miss Wheat's first grade blog!!!

2.  Post a blogger in your same grade level
I've really enjoyed browsing through The Sweet Life of 3rd Grade's blog!  I love her enthusiasm.

3.  Post a blogger in a different grade level.  I have to acknowledge the Literacy Strategist at our school,  Mrs. Hasty.  Her new blog,  What's Happening in Literacy, is going to be very informative!

4.  It's all about the button. Find a cute blog button and post it
.I'm not sure how to post button's but The Sweet Life's button is adorable!




This was fun!!!