Literacy Center Writing

This week students have added many new ideas and learning goals to our Literacy Centers. We are having fun and exploring new ways to incorporate writing into our centers.

The boys are enjoying creating HOW TO books at the writing center. We created a new I CAN list with a goal of writing stories to explain something. Some other friends have started creating their own story books using a Narrative writing checklist. Some great writers are emerging in our room. A wonderful idea came from DL to add our completed books to our class library. Excellent idea! Some students are creating rough copies before creating a good copy into a book. We look forward to reading all books really soon.

Also at the Writing Center this week, students continue to write persuasive letters to people in our school. Some students are even getting replies from other teachers. It is really neat to see the fun persuasive ideas our students are coming up with! They are learning how to write good reasons, and how to be even more convincing as the replies come in. I have a few students working very hard to try to convince me to have a class party. I am hoping they can convince with really good reasons or facts!

Have a read at some of the persuasive letters I received this week so far. Students used AudioBoo to record their letter before delivering it to me in an envelope. I wonder if they can be persuasive enough!

listen to ‘HH & ab & md persuasiveing Mrs.ciampa’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘RC. EC. Persuasive Writing’ on Audioboo

More persuasive writing success. WN convinced the grade 1's to have a dance party today!!! pic.twitter.com/ur4Ad9IyMH
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) May 23, 2014

Persuasive Open House Letters!

Taking turns in our circle to read our letters.

Tomorrow is the day! All week long we have been preparing to persuade our families to come to our Open House on Thursday May 8th from 4:30-7:00! Tomorrow is the day and we hope that we have done enough to convince you. We have been challenged by Mrs. Swan's grade 3 class...so we want to be the class winners. We hope to see you in our room 202 tomorrow evening!

Our persuasive Open House letters are complete and we have sent them home to you today. Your child is very excited to read them to you! Students have also recorded their persuasive reading on the AudioBoo app. The more we use this app in our room, the more we can see that many MORE students in our room are becoming AudioBoo app experts. Very exciting! A Tech Expert means students are able to use the app on their own AND teach others how to use it too. We look forward to showing you how much we know tomorrow.

Persuasive talking circle with the Grade 3's

Students also got to read their persuasive letters to Mme. Paradis and Mrs. Swan's grade 3 class today too! We held a Talking Circle to share our letters with both classes. All of the students had really convincing arguments and reasons. Mme. was very impressed with how well we all wrote.

You can listen to all of our AudioBoo persuasive recordings below.

listen to ‘NN open house’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘AW open house’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘dl open house’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘ec’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘RC Open House’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘HH & AB &WN Persuasive writeing’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘PE open house’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘co opin house.’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘open house ao’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘AB open house’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘FF open house’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘KI open house’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘open house by HH’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘open house by WN’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘MD open house’ on Audioboo

Can We Persuade You?

NN wrote about this at the Teacher Center today. A great writing idea!! pic.twitter.com/YQJ8zR2HT1

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) May 1, 2014

Student generated ideas to persuade families to come to Open House!

We continue to work on persuasive writing in our classroom. Students are learning how to persuade someone to do, think or believe something. We are brainstorming how we can do that in writing.
Last week, NN came up with a great writing idea during our Literacy Centers. When we consolidated, she told us that she was going to try to convince her mom to come to our Open House to see our classroom on Thursday May 8th after school. We all thought this was a perfect writing opportunity!

We are using the persuasive writing form to share how we might convince our families to visit our classroom during our Open House evening. We began with a brainstorm and wondered...what are the reasons why we want our families to come. Please have a read at our reasons above!
We are currently writing our rough draft. Students are coming up with creative reasons and are being very convincing so far.
After finishing the first part of our writing, students decided to record their convincing letters on AudioBoo so far. I have included some of our AudioBoo persuasive writing recordings. We will continue to write about why we think our families should attend our Open House this week. We will be writing our good copies.

Stay tuned for the final product!!

AB Open House persuasive letter. http://t.co/D8szbNATNf

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) May 2, 2014

HH:Open house persuasive letter http://t.co/MMgNkbhFY1

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) May 2, 2014

r.c. Persuades her mom to come to open house http://t.co/ejL6GDJdL0

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) May 2, 2014

NN is trying to persuade mom to come to our Open House! http://t.co/glOa7nDfey

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) May 2, 2014

Inferring and Talking Circles

We continue to focus on inferring when reading. Students have even inferred while reading various Holy Week stories as the week has gone on. They are making great connections and using what they already know to infer the hidden meaning in a story. Another important part of inferring is when we infer what the author's message is. Author's message is when we think about what important topic or message the author wanted us to learn after reading a story. We explored this when reading a story called "Oliver Button is a Sissy". First, students inferred what Oliver might be feeling. Next students inferred why the boys might be treating Oliver like they had in the story. At the end, we thought about what the author's message might be. What did the author want us to learn from this story? We did a Talking Circle to explore this as a class. The students had so many great ideas to share. We recorded a small part of our circle on AudioBoo that you can hear below. We will continue to infer and use a Talking Circle for class discussions as the weeks go by. We are working on being good listeners during this great talking session.

listen to ‘Best of All Talking Circle’ on Audioboo

Inferring with AudioBoo

In class, we continue to work on the Inferring reading strategy. When we infer, we use what we already know + the clues from the text to help us to read in between the lines. We are making predictions and determining what the author is thinking. It is important to explain your thinking when inferring. Our current focus is to make an inference, and explain our thinking with a why statement. Below, students recorded their inferring thinking after reading a story called "Ali Runs with the Pack". We are pair-sharing and writing about our inferences. We are also using the iPad app AudioBoo to capture our thinking during our Literacy Centers.

Some students are becoming AudioBoo experts. Our class is really benefitting from these experts because they are assisting classmates to use the AudioBoo iPad app to record an inference. This will come in handy when we add this to our Literacy Centers. Congratulations to AB and RC for being our class AudioBoo experts. And congrats also to DL for being our class QR Code expert!! Way to go grade 2.

 Click the AudioBoo links below:

Lent Begins

During our Literacy Centers, a popular center that has emerged is the "Teacher Center". Students are collaborating daily to build the center. They enjoy taking turns to be the teacher and guide a lesson. Yesterday, students brainstormed what Lent means. They made a list and I recorded their thinking using the AudioBoo iPad app. Have a listen to what they already know about Lent:

https://audioboo.fm/boos/1969264-teacher-center-wonder-what-is-lent

We made posters today to show what Lent promises we made.  Have a peek!

Self+Peer Assessment and Retelling

Our reading focus continues to be focusing on the important details when retelling. We are focus on the important details when we learn about retelling to help us write recounts as well. Students are focusing on only the important details when we read and retell stories both orally and when writing.


We are focusing on peer-to-peer assessment. Students are getting the opportunity to be "teachers". They are referring to the Retell success criteria checklist to see if students are including all parts of a retell. They are also looking for capital letters, finger spaces and punctuation. Good writers use a checklist to keep on track. As little teachers, we are using post-its to helps our friends edit their work. Excellent job grade 2!!
We also continue to self-assess our work. We continue to refer to the checklist to help keep us on track. We also tested out a new app called Dragon Dictation. This app allows us to read and then the words that appear on the screen. Students got the chance to re-read and check to see if they spelled their words correctly.
Another way we are assessing our understanding is through Twitter. This week we introduced a new part of our class called Book Talk. During Book Talk, we sit in a small group and talk about the books that we read. We are answering questions to extend our understanding. Students are also looking on Twitter on the iPads for a Book Talk question asked by me, and they are replying with answers to the questions. Have a read at some of our Book Talk Tweets below.

We also included some Book Talk AudioBoo responses. Have a listen to some retells so far:

FF: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1957079-ff-retells-the-very-hungry-bear

PE: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1957149-pe-retella-the-hungry-bear

HH: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1957057-hh-retells-hungry-bear

Landscapes and Reading Fluency

In Art today we started working on landscapes. We are thinking about winter pictures and winter landscapes. We sang a song about landscapes and talked about what background, middleground and foreground mean. 

Today we started with the  back part of our landscapes. We used white, dark blue and light blue to create the back part of our landscape photos. 

Next time we will focus on creating the background, middleground and foreground using winter pictures. Ask your child to explain what those art terms means!

Using the AudioBoo iPad app to self-assess our reading fluency.

One strategy we are working on in class is to self-assess our reading fluency. We are trying this with our partners in our literacy centers when we read with someone. We also work on this when reading by ourselves during literacy centers time. We used the AudioBoo app to record ourselves while we read. We listen to the recording and follow the text to see if we read too fast or too slow, to see how we can read unfamiliar words and also to recognize if we've missed any words when reading. Students enjoy this strategy. It is teaching them how to self-assess their own reading while working on their Raz reading. 

AO: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1841110-ao-reading-on-raz

FF: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1841127-ff-reading-on-raz

Remembrance Day Visualizing

In class today, we talked about Remembrance Day to prepare for our mass on Monday morning.  We started by reading the book A Poppy is to Remember.  We learned about the war from a long time ago.  We talked about why soldiers had to go to war.  We talked about peace and freedom and what they mean to Canada.  Ask your child about what they learned about peace today.

After reading the story we wondered: Why do we need to wear a poppy on Remembrance Day? Below are our word collage answers:

We also watched a video that shows how the soldiers who were Canadian in the war are heroes... here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsCVlM1CSPU

We also read the poem In Flanders Field. The students were not shown any photos of the poem but used their imagination to visualize and picture what the poem might look like! When we visualize we picture in our minds what a story looks like. We recorded AudioBoo samples to share what we visualized. Follow the links to hear our visualizing pictures!

CW: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713213-cw-visualizing

EC: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713210-ec-visualizing

FF: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713205-ff-visualizing

DL: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713181-dl-visualizing

CO: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713178-co-visualizing

MD: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713169-md-visualizing

RC: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713166-rc-visualizing

HH: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713168-hh-visualizing

AO: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713157-ao-visualizing

WN: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713159-wn-visualizing

AB: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713146-ab-visualizing

NN: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1713155-nn-visualizing

AudioBoo for Fluency

In class on Friday we worked on a friend interview. The students worked with a partner to ask questions to find out new information about each other. It was great to watch the students work so well together. After we finished our friend interview, the students created an AudioBoo recording.We are starting to use the AudioBoo app to capture student thinking and to listen to our reading fluency. 

Have a listen to our reading on the AudioBoo iPad app:

HH: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1700576-hh-new-friend

MD: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1700574-md-new-friend

FF: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1700566-ff-new-friend

DL: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1700569-dl-new-friend

AO: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1700337-ao-new-friend

WN: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1700332-wn-new-friend

EC: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1700327-ec-new-friend

NN: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1700322-nn-new-friend

AB: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1700319-ab-new-friend

CO: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1700314-co-new-friend

What is a good friend?

In Religion we are focusing on what makes a good friend. Students brainstormed what they think a good friend looks like. We made a list together and talked about what we can do to be good friends to one another. I explained to the students that Mme. Paradis is a good friend to me because she said thank you after I let her borrow our white chart paper. The students said that when a friend says thank you, they are using good manners. We added good manners to our list of what makes a good friend!

After I told the students the story of why Mme. Paradis said thank you to me, they decided that we need to say thank you to Mr. Bob. Mr. Bob learned that we did not have the grade 2 symbol in our classroom. So one day, he promised to give us a chalice to add to our prayer table. When he kept his promise, the students decided to make a thank you card for him! We wrote a special message to him,


and surprised him today in his class with our card. He was so thankful and really surprised!

Today in Religion class, the students started to write in their Important Book. Our first entry was about being a good friend. It is important to be a good friend. The students had really great ideas of what a good friend is. 

We used the iPad app called AudioBoo to read from our Important Book about good friends. Here are some of our entries:

RC: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670637-rc-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

AO: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670632-ao-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

EC: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670630-ec-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

CW: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670628-cw-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

CO: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670626-co-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

H: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670624-h-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

WN: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670621-wn-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

CL: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670619-dl-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

AB: https://audioboo.fm/boos/1670617-ab-shares-what-makes-a-good-friend

Finally, in the afternoon we spent time with our Grade 3 friends. We worked on math and language centers. The students really enjoyed working with their partners. It was a great friendship day.