Connecting to Characters

In our read-aloud,"No Talking", a main character was inspired by Gandhi which led him to try being silent. Ms Montilla thought about being Gandhi for character day but after her son said that she looked like a Roman when she donned a white blanket and borrowed her husband's glasses, she decided to share about Gandhi through literature instead. Using our multiple copies on Gandhi's life story, we broke into small groups where each one took a turn reading aloud to the small group of four. The next step was to engage in a silent activity of drawing a doodle of what we heard and understood from the text. The last step was a rotation of students explaining and moving to new groups to share about Gandhi.

Endings

Our final read-aloud in Third Grade was entitled,"No Talking" by Andrew Clements. BOPDs enjoyed listening to a story about fifth graders who were called, 'The Unshushables' by their teachers because they were a noisy group. A student named Dave was inspired by his research about Mahatma Gandhi and decided not try not talking in school. He liked the idea so much that he started a contest between the boys and girls in fifth grade. Everyone got involved and soon the teachers took notice as well.

The class connected to the story, most especially the relationship between the boys and girls. They were all excited when Ms Montilla announced that the last chapter was entitled, "Winners", anticipating and predicting who would win the contest.
This discussion led them to ask about endings in stories and why it seemed that most authors like to put happy endings. They inquired further and wondered what other kinds of endings stories could have. BOPDs are uncovering complexities in writing stories.

What Does the Author Say?

We focused on the authors of the many stories that we have read. We acknowledged their role in the unfolding of the story. BOPDs read and shared what they think the author of the book is saying to them. We put them all together and noticed the similarities and differences between ideas. Why are books like symbols? Because books carry words, and words have messages too.

Understanding

A learning point from our last presentation was about understanding what you present, and not memorizing it. A few presenters were facing the board and reading the text from their presentation which prompted the class to refer to the communication skills: A presenter must recognize their audience. Armed with this learning, BOPDs were challenged to create a passion project about their reading buddies based on how they understand the way they play and the way they read - which is what we have been doing with them all year. Using Google Slides and icons form www.flaticon.com, each BOPD created a simple presentation about their reading buddy. Each slide contained an icon that represents their understanding. We will share these presentations with our buddies today.

Thinking and Thanking

After watching the MS Storytelling Play last week, BOPDs wanted to try it out for themselves. They planned and rehearsed a short skit to present to the class. It was also our way of celebrating and thanking Ms Kim for joining our class this year. Through her help, we dug into language and explored all forms of communication. These skits were a way to showcase our skills as communicators. After every skit, we shared plus-minus-idea feedback with the performers. We ended the session by expressing our emotions through messages directed to Ms Kim. As the year draws to a close, we are thinking and thanking all those who have helped us.

Writing Process

BOPDs are about to close the year. As a way to celebrate their learning, they will be sharing one featured story from their portfolio and will highlight the writing process. Each student has prepared the display that will showcase their writing. A student can choose previous work or a current one, so long as they can provide evidence of how the writing process helped them.

We plan to share these with families on our final get-together as a class.

Infographic Interrogation

BOPDs analyzed images from an infographic created by Ferdio and featured in The New York Times. Each group of four had an infographic, and they tried to figure out what it was trying to tell them about flags all over the world. Teams worked non-verbally, striving to scribe their thoughts on paper. To complete the task, Ms Montilla gave groups a secret message inside an envelope containing cut up words, that once arranged correctly, states the message relayed by the image. Teams worked collaboratively to figure out the sentence. Students used punctuation to guide them on sentence structure. Students also asked, "Does it make sense?", "Does it sound right?", and "Does it look right?" to guide them. Once they thought they had a good idea of the sentence, they verified that it matched the image they were analyzing. Tomorrow we will revisit these statements and create our own infographic on flags using the ones that represent each student.

Unpacking Statements

BOPDs unpacked the statement, "I can form and use adjectives and adverbs to compare two or more things." They encircled words they know and did not know,  and added notes to share their thinking. As a class, they looked at all the notes and what they noticed about it. Ms Montilla paired them and chose word by word to let pairs talk further about they mean. We looked at the word, "form" and explained what it meant. We highlighted the word, "two" and justified why this number or more is necessary to compare things. Finally someone gave an example of an adverb and this drove the class to compare two students and their running skills. Through this we noticed how words are formed when we compare.  Using a game that Ms Montilla designed, two teams were created and battled to compare two random photos, forcing them to form and use adjectives and adverbs. As an exit pass, pairs were given topic chips that they used to show a comparison using first a comparative statement, and then a superlative statement.

Connect, Extend, Challenge

Using half of a giant post-it, and then marking it in thirds, BOPDs thought about how their thinking connected, extended, and was challenged by the story they were reading. In the challenge part, some students struggled to convey their thoughts so we reframed it by thinking about what question we had while reading.

Responding to Text

In our read aloud, "The Butterfly Lion", there's a line that reads, "To be really brave, you have to overcome fear." Due to this line we found out that many of us are afraid of heights! We shared our experiences and found out different coping strategies that we have tried.

This story had inspired us to think about kindness and friendship through the relationships depicted.

Ready to Write

Ms Montilla introduced the phrase 'mise en place' by sharing a photograph. We thought about the identity of the person who prepared the items on the photo and many of us agreed that it was a chef! In pairs, we wrote down our reply to the question,"What is the chef preparing for? What do these items mean? What is next?' There were many ideas shared, one of which was that everything was organized. Mise en place is a culinary term which means everything is in place and the person is ready to proceed. Based on that idea, we wondered if we could apply it to other identities. Mr Scott then showed us his mise en place as an author. He had a lot of interesting things but we helped him think about what was essential for him to start writing. We drew our own mise en place as authors and have now pledged to use it as a guide to prepare ourselves as authors.

Our Restaurant, Our Passion

BOPDs are excited to open their restaurant tomorrow during International Day. It has been our class passion project to transform our classroom into a restaurant serving food from different cultures. It was a chance for us to research about the nutrients contained in foods that we usually eat, and an opportunity to collaborate on a project that celebrates culture. Today was our final day of setting up. Students set up tables and added the centerpieces. We learned a napkin fold from classmates and wrote "Thank You" notes to the parents who have volunteered to be the staff at our restaurant.

The Butterfly Lion

A student suggested this book as our next read aloud because, "it's also about kindness". We are excited to start another journey into a story that brings our class together and makes us think about our class precept, 'we help each other'.

Friendship Posters

We created "Friendship" posters as a response to the book, 'Auggie & Me". We decided as a class to read the book together after we had finished, "Wonder". Like saying goodbye to a friend, we had mixed feelings when the last chapter was read aloud. These posters were inspired by the story.

We worked in pairs and used Google Draw to depict our ideas for friendship. 

Friendships

For the very last chapter of the book, 'Auggie & Me', we all took turns to read aloud to the class. This gave students a chance to initiate the discussion from their viewpoint.

Conventions

What does 'conventions' mean and how does it connect to writing?

BOPDs searched for the meaning of the word from different sources and wrote it down on slates. The class rated the definitions, 1 being the least connected, and 4 being the most connected to writing.

This definition garnered the highest rating:

"Writing conventions such as spelling, punctuation, capitalization and grammar help make a student's essay clear and understandable."

It was also agreed that conventions means an agreement practiced among a group of people. Based on this learning. BOPDs wrote an essay about the preparations they've been involved in for our restaurant. Ms Montilla read their entries and rated it for the use of conventions.

Connections

When we connect to what we are reading, we are thinking about what the author is saying. When we make connections, it considers the relationship between two points: the text and my own experiences, the text and another piece of literature, the text and a real-life situation. BOPDs explored this and documented their thinking in many ways. Some chose to use post its, others wrote lists and a few sought to mentally take notes. We paired up and exchanged notes to share our thinking and how what we read affected us. We are recognizing the author as the other person in the conversation.

Sharing our Opinion Thru Email

BOPDs helped Ms Montilla one of her son's many questions. This time it was a question about a gum fight that involved gummy bears, gum drops, gummy worms and chewing gum. Her son asked, "Who would win?" BOPDs shared their opinions and reviewed the qualities of writing an opinion to guide their thinking. At the same time, they also learned about the qualities of writing email. The basics are, addressing the recipient, being clear with your message, including an ending, and signing off with your name. The class was quiet as we used electronic email as our main avenue of communication, and at the same time there were compelling reasons and interesting scenarios presented.

My son asks me many questions every day. It's time to ask for help. What do you think BOPDs? pic.twitter.com/r5MKqewtmL

— TheBOPD's (@msmontilla) March 8, 2016

Learning Together about the Shingaling

A student collaborated with Ms Montilla when it was her turn to read to the class. She acknowledged that the text was too hard but she wanted to stay involved lead the class to make meaning of the text. Ms Montilla read the chapter a paragraph at a time and she wrote down questions she had about what she heard. In the end, Ms Montilla could not help herself and also wrote down notes because of the way the student skillfully thought about questions while listening. When it was time to read to the class, the student explained and shared this new idea of reading with a friend and then they shared the chapter. It was about a dance called, "shingaling" that was popular in the 60's. Both she and Ms Montilla were intrigued to find out what the dance looked like so they searched for it on Youtube and later shared the video with the class too. The student shared that she had seen her grandparents dancing the same way but she never knew that it was the 'shingaling".

Research

BOPDs used the recommended website cited in the passion project of their classmate. The website traces the history of words. They took note of the language origin of words and added the meaning.