Earth Day, More Art in the Sky and Reading with Meaning!

Storms and Blogs
Last week the storm on Thursday evening blew out the power in the area where I live for three (LOOOOONG) days. 
I found out a few things...
1) My woodstove is great as it kept the house (and me) warm 
2) Yes, you can make and heat up coffee with a blowtorch 
3) You really miss your technology (and texting) when the batteries die (prompting me to wonder how would the 'pioneers' handle this?)
4) The pioneers must have really had bad hair...ugh, no curling iron
So, if you wondered where I went to, let's just say I had some technical difficulties for a while! But I'm back....

Earth Day
To celebrate Earth day at school, students will be out doing some spring cleaning around the Florence Meares P.S. playground this Friday. Please send in an old glove (even a rubber glove or plastic one is fine) so students have one when it is our turn. There are usually some provided so don't worry if you forget. Monday April 22nd will be our first 'Litterless Lunch' Day. This is when you pack a lunch for your child that has no wrappers to throw out. Try to use containers that can go back home or a thermos. I realize this may take some creativity but I think I might be able to do it for one day myself...
Remember Eco -Girl and our Super Eco-team will be flying through the school to help with any Eco-emergencies! 

                           Reading Strategy of the Week
??????????????????????????Questioning???????????????????????????
When reading with your child, help them use question words when discussing the story. Try to have them use different question words to start the dialogue with you. Here is the chart we used when doing our mini- lesson on questioning.

 A great book to use is 'Little Black Crow' by Chris Raschka as it is a book entirely written using questions. My students have written their own animal question books using this authors style. By researching a favourite animal using the computer program 'Pebble Go' which is part of the Burlington Public Library's on-line tools, students were able to implement and showcase what they have learned.

The other books pictured are great books to use for 'Narrative Writing' which we have begun to discuss. The 'Sidewalk Rescue' book really helps us learn about 'Story Mountains' which is when we analyze a book to discover the structure of a good narrative. The Fourth Little Pig is also a wonderful book that you can use to help students infer the outcome of the 'problem' in the story. We wrote alternate endings for this book in 'Writer's Workshop' and some of the student endings were really delightful! 

(special thank you to teacher and friend G. Cunningham as I totally scammed her 'story mountain' chart to use with my students...good teachers share but also good teachers give credit to those who share :)

                                Art in the Sky (May 13 -16)
Cool facts!
*The Falcon we are creating will be 260 feet in length across our 
  field
*Each class will have a specific colour and all the colours will go
   together to make the falcon (don't worry about getting a t-shirt as
  this will be organized for you)

Here are some of the dates of interest:
May 13 - Daniel Dancer shares his multi-media presentation with grouped classes

May 14 - Volunteers and older students prepare the field by mapping out a grid and laying mulch in areas

May 15 - Event Day -Photographers, Media, T-shirts given out

May 16 - 'Celebration' Assembly - DVD of how we all came together to create 

                              Have a great week everyone!