literacy circles

In my new entrant class we have started learning some of the roles- character describer, word detective and the illustrator. I am already amazed at the depth of the childrens thinking and language -who said you have to be able to read to do this. We have used a big book 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf" An Aesops Fable.
I have decided to use a scrap book to record our work - its an easy way to look at what we have done and also to be able to work on things again.
Highlights of what we have done so far include -the children relistening to the story and telling me the interesting words. We had words like prowling and to help them to understand what the wolf was doing we role played the wolf moving to get the sheep. Next the kids had to say what they were doing -out came words like sneaking, being down low and being quiet. For 'every morning he collected the sheep' we collected 3 items from around the room and then had to explain what we had done. K. said 'I gathered these lanterns."
I am loving the kid's joy of words . Next I want to see where they go with the connector role. Will they be able to make the link to their lives???

e- learning

I have just spent time looking through one of R's e-fellows wiki and seen some great stuff that a junior teacher is doing with her class in literacy.I really want to learn how to do voice thread. I am seeing more and more examples lately of teachers using technology tools to really help their student's learning--- its probably just that I am at last starting to know what I am looking at.
I love it that I am now starting to know what I want to learn about (and more importantly what I want my kids to learn.)-- before I was in that totally confused place of 'not knowing what I don't know????'
I really like the way R is sharing her e fellow 'stuff' and is Ok that I want to know more.

Literacy Circles

I have got onto Robyns blog and room8's one where the children are working on their literacy circle work. At last I can see a real purpose for blogging- one that really helps the learning.
After the East Cape trip we had to do a survey where next steps need to be put in place. One of mine was to get the kids blog up and running. Robyn's blog work has given me real motivation for this.