Audio Book - Listening to Reading

Here are a couple of free and pay for use site to download audio books for Listening to Reading for Daily 5 for use on your mp3/iPod players.

Free:

Guelph Public Library
http://www.library.guelph.on.ca/
There are many digital and ebooks are availabe for new and older titles.   All you need is your library card.   The lending period is 7-14 days for the file to be active. 

This site is limited in new titles, but have tons of classics. 
http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/
This website also includes the digital text for you to follow along.

Pay for Use:

http://www.audiobooks.com/
This is a membership based website for 25/month.

http://www.audible.com/
This is also a membership based website for 15/month.

If you have your own favourite free or pay for use sites, please let me know, and it will be added to this site.

All About Me Goes Home

Thank you for the amazing work.  Please hear me when I said that I was using this work for diagnostic assessment (what do you know now, what do I need to teach you later).  Please take the feedback you received to push yourself to the next level.

If you have any questions or concerns, please come and talk to me about it.  I will respectfully listen to you and respond with further justification of your assessment or change as needed.  We are all learning together.

Technology in Class

We live in a digital age, and many of you have digital texts on your hand held devices/laptops.   Some of you also prefer to type over hand writing.   You are encouraged to bring technology to class to be used as part of your Daily 5 and Writers Workshop (more about that in the coming weeks) experiences.

To help keep us focus, you will now be asked to put your digital devices (laptops, iPads, iPods, MP3 players etc.) on the back counter during class when they are not needed to help focus your attention.  For example, you will be asked to put your technology away on the back shelf of the room when you are asked to gather in our Gather Spot/Place.

Thanks everyone for keeping a positive learning environment.

Daily 5

Here is a copy of the slide show from class about Daily 5

The order that we will be introducing the concepts are as follows

1. Read to Self
2. Read to Someone
3. Working with Words
4. Work on Writing
5. Listen to Reading

Anchor charts for each area will be created by you and the final 5 charts will be a combination of agreed concepts between all 8 classes.

You are responsible for bring 2-3 English texts to class, at your reading level, to enjoy as part of your Daily 5 time.  

Positive Learning Environment

This is the wordle for our positive learning environment created by all eight classes.  You should be very proud of your creation and I look forward seeing this positive community full of respect, honesty, responsibility, fun and kindness throughout the year.  

All About Me Update

**** Update!  We are down to a few missing assignment.  My goal now is to return all your work at the next class I see you in the cycle (so, Tuesday is Day 1).  Heads up now, there is no "mark" on it.  If you followed the success criteria, you can be confident that you did what was asked of you.  There is a rubric included on the feed back sheet.  I used the rubric to help guide my diagnostic ( learning what you know so I can teach later) assessment.  For example, in writing, we will be working on punctuation, use of capitals, and trying to remember that faire is a French verb, and fair is the English word meaning carnival or equal.

I have finished marking all the All About Me projects that I have, including digital.  Only 27 missing (and most of those are dead links or wrong email address).  Once I have a plan for those missing projects, I will get your work back to you as soon as possible.

Amazing work everyone!

Project Update!

What a gift it was to read many All About Me projects this weekend. So many of you are involved at home helping with family members, household chores (many of you have chickens!), and at school with Kindies, Office, and Pizza Helpers. There are many extracurricular activities happening with the arts and sports. It was interesting to hear some of your charities too, like Operation Smile, Shoebox, and Humane Society.

You're more concerned if I've marked it, I know :)

I have marked all hard copies that I have received. I have organized all the links and emailed copies, and my goal is to work on those this week.

I am missing 45 pieces of students' work, excluding 8C (looking forward to your work tomorrow!).

If I have your class tomorrow, I will let people know which work is missing. If I don't see your class tomorrow, my goal is to visit your class during your lunch break to share.

Anything received after 9pm this evening will not be considered tonight (must stop marking at sometime!)

Looking forward to a great week everyone.  Remember to bring in independent reading materials for class.