Jerry Pallotta

This past weekend, Miss Smith and I headed to the reading conference in Myrtle Beach. We had so much fun and learned so many new things that we can bring back to our own classrooms. While we were there, we had the chance to meet Jerry Pallotta. He is an author of children's books. We will study him later this year when we do our author study. Miss Smith and I got to hear him speak about the different things that inspired him to become an author while we were there, AND we even got the chance to purchase his books and bring them back to our classroom. Let me just tell you that the kids were SUPER EXCITED about his books. They were even more excited to see that he had signed one for our class! We have been LOVING his books this week! Miss Smith and I even got to take a quick picture with Jerry Pallotta before we left.

Me, Jerry Pallotta, and Miss Smith

Nonfiction Study

My itty bitties are becoming nonfiction gurus! We have learned sooo much about nonfiction over the past few weeks. We started this unit by getting to know about the genre of nonfiction. We learned about all the different features that nonfiction books offer, we sorted them, and then we chose a topic that we wanted to learn more about. Before the research could start, we took some time to get to know the research topics. Here are a few pictures of my little friends searching to find a research topic that is the best fit for each of them.

 Sorting Fun!!

The Pink Group

The Turquoise Group

The Blue Group

The Yellow Group

The Green Group

The Red Group

Now for the fun part...choosing the topic that is the best fit for each of us!

 

The Turquoise Group sorting through our buckets of fun!

I caught the Pink Group looking for a topic that they enjoy!

The Blue Group searching away. Eli seems pretty interested in our ocean books! What a cool octopus book!

The Green Group hard at work.

More searching from the Blue Group.

The Yellow Group trying to find a research topic that is interesting to them.

The Red Group. I see some good discussions going on here!

The Turquoise Group

We have been researching our topics ALL week! I hope that my little friends have been sharing all the new information that they have learned with you! Make sure you ask them what they are researching in our reading workshop! There will be more nonfiction research posts coming soon! I hope everyone is having a great week! :)

Biography Buddies

For the past two weeks, we have been very busy learning all about biographies. We learned about what kind of information they contain and how to write them. Over the past two weeks, we have read a lot of biographies, and my little smarties have been soaking up all the information they could. Finally, it was time for us to write our very own biographies. We started this process by drawing names and finding our biography buddies. Then, it was time to learn ALL about each other. The interview process has been so fun to watch. It has been by far the most favorite part of our biography unit. Here are a few pictures of our journey down the biography lane :)

The Interview Process:

Cannon and Kate

Cooper and Steven

Eli and Alexia

Gabbie and Katie

Kaylie Grace and Sam

Kinsley and Devon

Myleah and Kristos

Peyton and Anna

Tristan and Brooks

Nate and Victoria

Xzariah and Emily

We are working on publishing our biographies this week. I cannot WAIT for you guys to read them. They have all worked soooo hard, and the biographies are looking awesome! We have some future authors on our hands here.

Not pictured: Caleb and Breanna

Valentine's Day

So today was one of the FUNNEST days of the year! Let me just tell you that we had sooo much fun today! I made a little slideshow so that all of you could share in our fun!

Slideshow design created with Smilebox

Reading is sooo much fun!

I don't know if you have noticed but we LOVE to read in room 108! Here is a cute little slideshow of our reading fun!

Make a picture slideshow

Nonfiction Books!!

In our reading workshop this week, we started learning about nonfiction books. Oh my mercy do we LOVE nonfiction books. :) We have learned sooo much already, and we are just getting started! Ask your little sweeties about all the different features we learned about this week and how they help us read and understand nonfiction books better :) So far, we have learned about the table of contents, photographs, picture captions, the glossary, index, graphs, diagrams, and different types of print.

My little firsties have been so excited to share all the new information they have been learning during independent reading. So cute...and it makes for one happy teacher to see so much reading going on! :)

Kristos found a very cool book on the planet Venus

Cannon learning all about one of our country's symbols...The Statue of Liberty

Zari found a book about farm animals

Brooks found a really cool book about ocean animals

Look! Breanna found a GREAT table of contents to share with the class!

Cannon found one too! He is ready to pick a reading target.

Steven found a very cool table of contents that had pictures to go with it!

Watch out! Kaylie Grace is learning ALL about sharks!! Look at those picture captions :)

Here are a few pictures from our first time exploring nonfiction books. They definitely had their sweet little noses stuck in these books...this makes for one happy teacher too :)

The green group taking it all in :)

Look at that dedication!

Such good readers!

Great reading Sam!

This is one of my favorite things to teach during our reading workshop. We have so much fun and learn so many new things! We are going to learn how to do some research next week. I can't wait! So much fun!!

Prize Patrol

We have so many smarties in our room, and they were ALL over the prize patrol this nine weeks. Prize Patrol comes around at the end of each 9 weeks. Mrs. Padgett and Mrs. Jones hand out rewards to those students who made all A's and those who made A's/B's as well. They also give a special award to the students who had PERFECT attendance!

This slideshow design created with Smilebox

Hip Hip Hooray! It's the 100th Day!

I cannot believe we have been in school for 100 days! Look out world...we are 100 year old smarties! We had SO MUCH fun on the 100th day of school! We made really cool hats, a 100th day trail mix (which was a MAJOR hit I might add), played really cool math games, and made self-portraits of ourselves at 100 years old! I have to say that I love these little kiddos! They make me smile each and every day!

100th day fun!

Make your own photo album