Comparing Characters

We are all absolutely loving our latest read-aloud book Matilda, especially because it has so many wonderful and crazy characters! This week, we've done a lot of comparing of characters during Reader's Workshop by looking at what is the same and what is different about them as well as how they affect one another. 

Because we are all reading the story Matilda together, we worked with our reading partners to create Venn Diagrams comparing two characters from the book. For some characters it was VERY easy to think about how they were different, but we had to dig deeply to find ways in which they were similar. 

We can't wait to see what happens to to Matilda next! 

Celebrating 2017

We have had a wonderful time reconnecting with our friends and our classroom after our school vacation. We rang in the new year by starting some new stories, reviewing some learning from the beginning of the year, and by creating some some toasty friends! 

We began doing lots of character work in our reading and writing! While we are beginning to develop our own fictional characters for our stories in Writer's Workshop, we are also beginning to get to know the characters from Matilda. We even did a bit of drawing during Reader's Workshop this week to show how we picture Matilda's dad Mr. Wormwood in our minds:

We've also been reviewing some math concepts such as number grid puzzles and coins with some fun new games!

Our week wouldn't have been complete without our New Year's Toasts:

We talked about some of the people who mean most to us and created some New Year's Toasts to celebrate those we love and the things we love most about them

We hope this new year brings you lots of love, joy, and peace. 

Happy 2017!

Fairy Tale Wax Museum Choices

Hello, Families!

This week, our homework will again be different from our normal weekly packet. A form will be coming home to give you more information about our upcoming Fairy Tale Wax Museum, which will take place on Tuesday, May 19th. The third section of this form must be returned to school by Thursday, April 23rd (or sooner if you are going on vacation) with your top three character choices for the wax museum. You are more than welcome to choose ANY main character from any fairy tale you have read before, so please specify which characters you would like to be. Some may end up being different characters from the same fairy tale, so it is important for us to know which character you would like to be from the story. 

Last week, we sent home a list of Fairy Tales so you could start brainstorming, so here is that list again if you need to refer to it when making your choices. We will let you know by Friday who your Wax Museum character will be! 

Aladdin

Alice in Wonderland

Beauty and the Beast

Chicken Little

Cinderella

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Hansel and Gretel

Jack and the Beanstalk

Little Red Riding Hood

Peter Pan

Pinocchio

Rapunzel

Rip Van Winkle

Rumpelstiltskin

Shrek

Sleeping Beauty

Snow White

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

The Elves and the Shoemaker

The Emperor’s New Clothes

The Frog Prince

The Gingerbread Man

The Little Mermaid

The Little Red Hen

The Princess and the Pea

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

The Three Little Pigs

The Ugly Duckling

Thumbelina

Tom Thumb

Happy Hunting! 

Studying the Craft of Kevin Henkes

Whenever we read a new Kevin Henkes story, we've noticed certain parts of his writing and illustration that appear in many of his books. On Friday, Ms. Riley told us those things we'd been noticing are part of Kevin Henkes' craft. His craft involves anything he does on purpose to make his writing look or sound a certain way. It is the art of writing! 

After talking about Kevin Henkes' craft, we got to work finding those craft techniques in his stories! We worked together with our reading partners to find examples of each craft (mouse characters, comic strip pictures, lots of dialogue, talk in pictures, and repeating sentences) and wrote them down. We were lucky enough to also have the help of several other teachers that day (from SMS and beyond!), who were in observing literacy in second grade! We shared our findings with one another and found many connections across his stories.

This week, we are working hard to include many of those craft techniques in our own writing. We've especially had fun with adding those techniques into our illustrations! Our stories are coming along so well, and we've really enjoyed sharing our ideas and rough drafts with one another.  

Authors as Mentors: Kevin Henkes

Over the last few days, we've slowly begun to transition into our latest writing unit Authors as Mentors. We've been reading lots of books by Kevin Henkes, who has written many children's books over the years, and we've been making a list of things we notice about his writing as well as his illustrations.

One of the things we've noticed in the books we've read so far is that Kevin Henkes uses mice for his characters. Today, we created our own Kevin Henkes characters and gave them a name. We made a list of names we've read in other stories, names of people we know, and names we just liked in general :) We will continue to talk about these characters and who they are throughout the week, and soon we will begin to write stories about them!