So much learning.

As a teacher you never really feel like you are caught up, and if you do feel that it is quite a short lived feeling. With so much learning going on there is not a moment that can be cast to the wind. As I now sit at "the end" of my day here at school I am remembering all of the exciting learning we did today, and I wish I had pictures. It was one of those days though where you go, go, go and taking pictures is something you don't remember.
We started our morning by reading a book that has a math connection. It was called Two of Everything and is a Chinese Folk Tale about a magic pot that doubles anything that gets dropped into it. It was quite a blast later in the day when the kids got to make up their own math stories about something that fell into the magic doubling pot. If you are interested in the story there is a version online if you Google the title.
Our reading comprehension strategy for October is questioning. We have been talking a lot about the questions that we have as we are reading. Some of these questions get answered later in the text, some we answer with our background knowledge, and some we get answered through other sources.
Lately in writing we have broken up into groups to study authors. We are looking at what things an author does consistently across different books they have written. Once we have learned about the author the students are expected to "Stand on the authors shoulders" and write something that was inspired by the author. That may be a topic (David Shannon writes a lot about himself when he was young, I'm going to write about something I did when I was younger), or it might be an illustration craft (Eric Carle uses collage, I will do that in my book). It has been fun watching students learn and grow in their writing by studying real authors.
We took our plants test today, so look for a second plant to be coming home soon. What great scientists we have in our room! They knew that a plant can grow from a bean and they had the evidence to back it up. They were also able to tell me that a plant needs air, water, and light in order to be healthy and strong. Way to go kids!