Ask Me About Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Today we continued testing, but we also took a little time for some fun.  We listened to a few Mo Willems' Piggie and Elephant books.  These books are great for beginning readers, but also good inspiration for beginning writers.  The Piggie and Elephant books are all dialogue, with big talking bubbles on each page.  The only other words are typically words for sounds.  Mo Willems followed the example of Dr. Seuss and used a very controlled vocabulary so young readers could experience reading "real books."  Willems also made the characters easy for children to draw so they could make their own Piggie and Elephant books.  The Piggie and Elephant books do not have settings in them either, so illustrating the book for early writers is easier without having to add those additional details.  Today, we watched a couple videos of Mo Willems.  One of the videos showed how to draw Piggie.  We practiced with Mo on whiteboards, then thought of topics for our own Piggie and Elephant books.  Then, we made a first try at a PIggie and Elephant book.  We will revise and edit before we make it into the final copy.  I was able to get more testing done while the students worked on their books, and the kids got to have a really good time creating their stories.
In math, we played a Snowball game to practice counting-on.  We will continue to work on counting-on, as well as story problems.  I do have some math testing to do, so the students will be playing some math strategy games as I call students over for the final assessments I need to do.  Because the children are working so hard, and fairly quietly, I've been able to get through a lot of this testing!  
We went to a sneak peek of the instrumental concert that will be tonight in the all purpose room.  The groups were really impressive.  The kids really enjoyed watching the older kids play.  Our kinders did a great job of sitting and listening.  I was really proud of their concert manners.

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe