Wait, there are books that have real things in them?!

Since the beginning of school, kindergarten has been learning about different genres of literature. First we had Fiction, then came Animal Fantasy,  next was the all exciting Folktale, and last, but not least, poetry. This month, we're learning all about nonfiction and...

What are the differences between FICTION and NON-FICTION?

To begin, last week we discussed what we noticed about nonfiction books and made an anchor chart.

This week, we looked at the differences between fiction and nonfiction stories with a partner. The students looked at the books and discussed what they saw. Then, we came up with a new anchor chart: fiction vs. nonfiction.

The students noticed really wonderful text features of nonfiction books including photographs, table of contents, index, word list, and most importantly, that the books we thought were nonfiction had all real things in them. Last week, one student even saw that nonfiction books can teach us things!

When asked which book their group thought was fiction, they held up the books on the left.
When asked which were nonfiction, they held up the books on the right.

Now that we're a bit more familiar with nonfiction books, we did a fun activity with Scholastic book order magazines. We cut out books we thought were fiction and nonfiction and sorted them accordingly.

The student's LOVE learning about this genre mainly because they're in love with the National Geographic animal books. If you don't have any in your home library, Scholastic has them available to order through the monthly book order!

Tell Me How It Made You Feel..

It's been a while since we've shown you all our writing, so I thought ...
"what better time than now?!"
Now, as we move into the spring of kindergarten, we know how to be writers: stories have words AND detailed pictures, we write about things that happen to us, and we're using our own inventive spelling (went may look like wet OR because may look like bcuz). These skills show how far your student's have come as writers and how much they have learned so far. Just look where we were in September here!

Each time we begin Writer's Workshop we come together and help Mrs. I. write a story making sure we use what we know about letters and sounds and our sight words!

This month, we're beginning to focus on making sure we add in a sentence that tells the reader how it made the writer feel. In the above story, I used my opinion (the food was yummy) to tell the reader how I felt about my story. I am trying to help students move away from the old standbys: it was fun, it was good, it made me feel happy, it made me feel sad, etc. 
Now it's the student's turn to tell us how they feel...

I have a wiggly tooth. Hannah wiggled one of my teeth. My one tooth felt like it was bleeding.
[This writer is exploring adding in details about feeling physical things (which is still a feeling!)]

I went bike riding with my sister. It made me happy. And my mom (was there).

I saw the movie Big Hero Six. I went with mommy and daddy and Mary. I love it.

Keep a look out for more details in your student's writing. Ask them to make sure they tell you:1. Where they went2. Who they were with3. How it made them feel

This is a writing Common Core Standard: W.K.3 - Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred, and provide a reaction to what happened.

Thank You, Mystery Reader!

We want to send a BIG thank you to Mr. Winfrey for visiting us last week as our Dr. Seuss Mystery Reader! The kids loved hearing you read and about your wonderful work as a volunteer firefighter in Topsfield!