These week we finished practicing our capital letters in our orange notebooks! We also learned about writing prompts and practiced in our green journals the writing prompt, "For Christmas I am...". We are looking forward to learning our lower case letters when we return from break.

This week, with all the new snow (and freezing temperatures) we read many read alouds about the fun we can have in the snow, and what everyone has to do to keep roads, airports, oceans, and trains safe when a big winter storm hits. Clifford's First Snow Day, by Norman Bridwell and Snow Day, by Betsy and Giulio Maestro gave us some ideas about what we could write in our own class book about the snow. We also read In The Snow, written by the Dolphins (last year's Kindergarten class) and that held our interest the best. There is always something special about reading a book written by people you know, who are not much older than you! Afterward, we got to work, and created our own class book about winter, on display now! Come see!

One part of our interactive and multi-faceted Writer's Workshop, we use a routine guideline for our mini-lessons, to ensure that students are learning about each skill required to become a successful emergent writer.

These include:

Teaching Point: Teach one teaching point per lesson.

Connections: Putting the minilesson in the context of the class's ongoing work.

Model: Explicit language to teach children a new strategy or concept. We model what we expect the students to do.

Active Engagement: (guided practice) After teaching something, children are given the opportunity to try the new skill or strategy.

Bridge to Independent Practice: An invitation/encouragement/suggestion to children to use the skill in their day's writing. This helps writers to discover the purpose for the writing they are about to do so they are prepared to get to work.

Closure: Pull students back together and recognize the work they have done relating to the teaching point. The closure may reinforce  the minilesson skill.

Reflection: We adapt, add, and extend lessons depending on our students' needs.