Due to some recent turmoil in our room, we had our first morning meeting today. Morning meeting will be our time to talk about our feelings, expectations, problems, and/or successes. Students led the discussion about what they should and should not do in the classroom. Students acted out examples of what to do when someone bothers you and they learned the fastest way to calm down--three deep breaths. Next, we set some ground rules for center time, defining what it should look like (working together at your own center), sound like (indoor voices and kind words) , and feel like (safe and fun).

Our shared reading today was about where we live: in a city called Billings, which is in a state called Montana, in a country called the USA (see if they can remember what the letters stand for), and in the world. We are compiling a book about where we live. Today, students wrote the name of our city and drew a picture of their favorite place in Billings. As you can imagine, many of them said The Reef water park!

After lunch, we read three Robert Munsch stories. You can go to his website at http://www.robertmunsch.com/booklist.cfm to listen to his stories. Afterward, we continued our writing project: "me" books. I'm so encouraged by their enthusiasm for the project. They are having so much fun filling pages for their books that we have spent more than our typical 30 minutes on writing! Most of the students have finished at least one book by now, and most have had the opportunity to read their book to the class. I'll try to video someone tomorrow so I can post their story to this blog.