Checking Back In

I am so sorry about not posting anything for Friday but to be honest sometimes I need to take a night off. Tonight is a perfect night to write, though, because tennis is on. I have played tennis since the net was as big as me. I do not get to play as much as I did but hopefully that will change one day soon. I believe teachers need things to have on when they grade. This is why I love baseball. I can grade a stack of papers in perfect peace when there is a Reds game on. The slow pace of the game fits with grading. Same with tennis the sounds of the shoes squeaking and the ball making contact just makes my pen work.  

Speaking of grading this weekend I got to take my first close look inside of the writer's notebooks. I was impressed. Students wrote stories, letters, poems, newspaper articles, comics, claims, posters, magazine articles, and so much more. I am always amazed by fourth grade writing. Sometimes you cannot believe the perfect words that our young authors pick to describe the way their dog walks or how the sun looks in the sky. As I was looking through the notebooks, I was making comments. Pointing out things I liked or ideas that stood out to me or anything else I wanted to focus on.

I hope you check out these writer's notebooks. They can give you a good idea of what we are doing in writing. It is also just plain fun to read the words of these young authors. Finally it gives you a window into the feedback that we are giving. You can use this feedback to help you have better conversations about writing.

We have also started talking about schema. Schema is another one of those words that I know we did not talk about when I was in fourth grade. Schema is another thinking strategy that we are going to focus on this year. Schema is background knowledge.  What we already know before we read anything. On Friday Ms. Cavallaro did an amazing lesson on schema. She wrote the word Kings Island on a poster and wrote down everything that the students knew or thought about Kings Island. She only gave the class a minute but they were able to share a lot. Then on the other side of the paper she wrote the word Rota Greca.  The class was unable to call out much about this word.  Why the difference? Schema of course. Ms. Cavallaro had schema for Rota Greca because she had traveled and visited family in this small village in Italy. We want our students to realize that the information they already know can help them when they read.

To help with this idea at home you may want to try some of these schema thinking stems:

• That reminds me of...
• I'm remembering...
• I have a connection to...
• I have schema for...
• I can relate to...

Hope that you are off to a great start to your week.