Nonfiction and How-To Books

This week during Reading Workshop, the children have been immersed in nonfiction books.  Every day this week, we learned about different features of nonfiction texts.  The children learned that nonfiction books are books that teach real information and often have:

• real photographs, but sometimes they have realistic illustrations instead.
• a Table of Contents.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• bold words.
• a Glossary.
• pictures with labels and captions.
  

This week we also learned a new poem, Animal Talk, to help us learn the word "said."

Next week we will continue our nonfiction reading unit with focus on comprehension.

During Writing Workshop, the children have been writing How-To books.  They learned to think of something they know how to do and teach someone else how to do it through their writing.  They learned to:

• use a teaching voice rather than a storytelling voice.
• use sequencing words to help keep our steps in order.
• use clear, specific words so that the reader knows exactly what to do.
• act out the steps to help us remember all the details.
• draw pictures with labels.
  

This week during Math we:

• learned about the nickel.
• played a coin exchange game with pennies and nickels.  Children learned that five pennies are equivalent to one nickel.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• used counting as a way to measure and compare time.  The children worked with a partner to establish a beat and then cross the room in various ways.  One child counted to the beat while the other child crossed the room.
• practiced solving comparison number stories.
• learned about spheres, rectangular prisms, cubes, cylinders, and cones.  We compared these 3-dimensional objects to 2-dimensional shapes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

In celebration of Dr. Seuss's birthday on Monday, we will have a school community meeting.  We will enjoy many Dr. Seuss read alouds throughout next week.

Have a lovely weekend.
Katie