Characters, Land & Water, More Nonfiction

 In Writer's Workshop, we met as a whole group on the carpet to discuss how the pictures in Song and Dance Man added to the story.  We also discussed why this book won a Caldecott Medal. 

Then we talked about how to create a fictional character.  Students answered questions on the green paper to help generate ideas. Some of the questions asked 'who do you look up to' or 'who has influenced your life.'  Then they created a list of people they knew that could serve as a possible inspiration to creating their make believe character. 

In Science we started our next unit: Land and Water.  To begin students wrote in their science notebook what they know about land and water and what they want to learn.  Next they traveled around the room to study 9 different pictures for 3 minutes each.  Each picture was of a different landscape such as a waterfall or mountain.  On the back of each picture were two questions students had to answer in their notebook such as how do you think this canyon formed or why is the land different colors?

This week in science students will create a model of the water cycle with sand, gravel, clay, dirt, water, and an ice pack.

In Reader's Workshop, before we begin our next novel (after spring break) we are reading plenty of nonfiction articles and determining the text structure (description, cause & effect, problem & solution, compare & contrast, sequential).  We also began reading small nonfiction books.  Today we completed a book walk to preview the text and completed a scavenger hunt to find different nonfiction text features (glossary, header, table of contents, etc.).