With yesterday as the first day of fall, summer is now officially behind us. I'm trying to avoid thinking about what season comes after fall, and all the snow and frigid temperatures that come with it...Speaking of temperatures, the temperature in our classroom is a fluctuating mystery. Some days it's quite chilly, while other days it feels like a sauna in there. Every morning is a guessing game: Will I need to bundle up today, or will I again be resorting to sticking my head in front of the fan by desk? Oh well, it could definitely be worse!

In reading this week, we concluded our launch unit. We discussed closely reading and annotating certain texts, and how the purpose of annotation is to slow us down and monitor our thinking as we read. We used a few activities to simulate this idea, from "digging deeper" into images to "digging deeper" into taste. On day one, I showed the kids the cartoon to the left, and at first glance they labeled it as someone drawing a dog. But when they took a closer look, they started noticing details like the sign on the door and the injuries on the cat. It was pretty funny when some of them had that Aha! moment and realized that the victim (the cat) was describing its attacker (the dog) to a police sketch artist. The next day, I gave each student an Oreo cookie and told them that it was a reward for their hard work and good behavior recently. I stressed that they had to eat it fast, as we had a lot to do and needed to get right back to work. Afterwards, we went to the rug, and I asked them what they ate. They looked at me like I was slightly insane, and simply said an Oreo. Then I told them they'd be getting another one, but this time, they had to savor it. They had to touch it, smell it, and let the taste linger in their mouths. As they ate, I encouraged them to pay attention to their thoughts. Afterwards, we reflected on the texture, ingredients, their favorite part, what they were thinking as they ate, etc. While we simply ate our first Oreo and moved on, our second Oreo experience resulted in a long list of reflections. In the same way, when there are complex texts we want to really dig into, we annotate. We read it once for the gist, then again to circle and infer the definitions of words we're unsure about, underline important parts, and note our thinking. By doing so, we read it closely and extract more meaning. Next week we'll kick off our fiction unit. I'm pumped!

In the afternoon this week, we talked about the different features of the three categories of writing we'll be exploring this year: narrative, expository, and opinion. The kids also shared their "Where I'm From" poems, which they finished typing and adding pictures to on Monday. They look awesome hanging up outside our classroom! We also did a pretest for our first social studies unit on map skills. This gives me an idea of what kids already know in relation to the topic, and what I'll need to focus on during this unit. In addition, we had our second week of yoga. I even participated on Friday (naturally deeming this my mode of exercise for the day...), and we had our best yoga class yet.

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Owen and Ava. Owen was an absolute star on Friday, raising his hand to participate just about every single time I posed a question. This showed me that he was really paying attention and engaged in our activity and discussion. Ava is also awesome. There were a few times this week when her focus and productivity stood out in an impressive way. It was ironic that Ava got Bucket Filler though, because she had gotten dismissed before I pulled her name. So Ava, if you're reading this, congrats-- you won!