Literature circles, the 6 Kingdoms and Good Communication

Literature Circles

In our morning class, we are ready to try and start literature circles properly. Today we tried to organize ourselves into groups based on the book we chose, and figure out which pages we need to read this week and for each of the next four weeks. Literature circles can get confusing, so here is a brief explanation of how it works:

1. At the beginning of a cycle, I will either put students into specific books, or I will allow them to choose their own. Often if they choose their own they are more interested, but they sometimes choose books that are too hard. This time, I let students choose their own books, since I am still getting to know them as readers and writers.
2. Next, we spend a bit of time getting organized. The groups get together and have a "meeting" in which they break the book up into roughly 4 equal parts. They are responsible for reading each part over the next four weeks. For example, if the book has 20 chapters, they would read chapters 1-5 in week 1, 6-10 in week 2, and so on. I encourage children not to read on in case they give something away to their group.
3. They also divide up the jobs in their meeting. The rule is that they can only do a job once in the cycle. Also, the Discussion Director job and Summarizer jobs must be done. They cannot be left out. Here is a link to our planning Literature circle planning sheet
4. Throughout the four weeks, I expect students to:
1. read the section they are supposed to each week
2. do their job for the week and post it in Edmodo
3. make 3 comments (answer questions, comment about the book, discuss with another student, etc.) in Edmodo.

That is it for Literature circles! I am hoping that it will be like on online book club, and that students will actively discuss their books in Edmodo. The combination of choosing their own books and using technology to interact and display their thinking may encourage them to have rich discussions.

Science

In science, we are learning about classification. Today we finished reading a little and taking some notes about the 6 Kingdoms. Here are some pictures of the charts that show the notes we took:

We are going to continue by looking at how scientists further classify plants an animals, and then we are going to try to classify a "mystery living thing" with a partner.

Health - Communication Skills

As part of the Health curriculum, we are learning about the importance of good communication skills, and how we can communicate effectively. Today we watched part of a short video which showed us that part of good communication is being a good listener. Here is an anchor chart we made during the video to help us remember: