Slice of Life is sponsored every Tuesday by Stacey and Ruth from Two Writing Teachers
Last Wednesday I was thrilled to welcome Brenda Power to my classroom. I’ve written for Brenda’s website, Choice Literacy, for almost a year now. My students laughed at the idea that I adored Brenda, considered her a friend, but had never met her in “real life.” Such a crazy age we live in.
Many
people have visited my classroom over the years; Brenda amazed me in that I
truly forgot she was there quickly after beginning our day. It was a wonderful
way to spend my morning; made even more special when she sent me an email with
hundreds of photos she had taken that day. I loved looking them over, it was
truly a slice of my day.
I’ve
added a selection of the photos into an Animoto video below. The photos span
two classes, reading workshop and writing workshop. In reading the students
followed along in the chapter Last Kiss
from Ralph Fletcher’s Marshfield Dreams. We were using a six box graphic
organizer that day to locate signposts from Notice & Note. I showed
in the mini-lesson how I found these signposts in this one chapter. This was a culminating
activity after studying all six signposts over the past two weeks.
In
writing we were taking about Marianne Malone’s book, Sixty-Eight Rooms.
Marianne is visiting my class in two weeks and we are doing a writing project
before she comes. The students were using the iPads to study the Thorne Rooms
and decide which room they’d like to shrink down and enter like Jack and Ruthie
do in the book. They then filled out an organizer to capture their thinking on
that room and we’ll return to it and write out a story soon.
Enjoy the video below! Feedly users - you might have to click over to see it.
