I’m so excited to link up with my BBB Holly for Tried It Tuesday!!

Speaking of Holly, you might remember that my class and Gary’s class are pen pals with her class… and my kids have been DYING to get letters back (they wrote the first letter to her class). I wish I could post the pic of their faces when I told them the box I was holding was from their pen pals!! They SCREAMED and squealed with excitement! I sent the picture to Holly though, so she could show her class how happy my class was!!

If you have the opportunity to connect with someone for your kids to have pen pals, I’m telling you, it is SOOOO worth it! :o)

Ok, now for what I’m REALLY here for! I want to share the way I am teaching poetry this year! (Apparently Holly and I are sharing a brain!! LOL! Be sure to read her post, too!) We are doing close reads of poems to analyze and summarize them. We started with Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening because it was one of the first poems in Love That Dog (read more about how I’m using that here). I projected the poem on the board and they also glued it down into their notebook. We read it together, then read each stanza and discussed the feelings and visuals we were getting as we read it.

I had the students write a summary afterwards. I wanted them to tell me what they think was happening using evidence from the poem. I think they really did a great job, especially since this was our first go at it!

This next student is one of my ELL students, so I was sooooo excited with what he was able to write!!

Don’t forget to come back and link up tomorrow for Workshop Wednesday to share your ideas for teaching FRACTIONS in Math Workshop! You could talk about manipulatives, books, lesson ideas, activities, games… really anything you do when you teach fractions! :o) See you then!