Alive and well ... and READING!

It has been TOO LONG since i have been on here!
i just don't know how some of you can do it!
life just seems to grab me and take me for a ride of which sitting down and relaxing (aka BLOGGING) never seems to be a destination!

so with the first half of the school year in my rear-view mirror, i have finally managed a detour moment to share what we have been doing ... .. . .

If you are not using Tammy McGregor's Book "Comprehension Connections" you are definitely MISSING OUT! See this {post} for more information on this book. For the myriad of you who are using it, we just finished Schema and wrapped up Metacognition around Thanksgiving. Here are some highlights from our "unit".

Created our "Reading Salad" 

( not the prettiest salad or anchor chart but I've gotten over it! ha! ) 

 We practiced "thinking" while reading the "text" with our partners and glued in the green and red slips we used to our notebooks for a nice visual :) 

We used the "Thinking Bubble" - the kids always like wearing the bubble :)

 Wrote down our "Thinking Stems" in our notebooks to use while we are reading.

We presented our "thinking" on sticky notes during independent reading time 

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      In writing we have been working on our Personal Narratives (Lucy Caulkins "What What!?")
We started by looking at Watermelon vs. Little Seed topics
Listed a few that we would be interested in writing
Chose one to create a story about

     Next we discussed PLOT and STORY STRUCTURE in reading and connected it to our Narratives by writing the Beginning, Middle, and End of our "Seed Stories" inside cute little watermelon booklets I adapted from a fabulous 2nd grade blog. They were also to make sure they included all of the elements of story structure to their plot outlines.