The students had lots of fun playing number recognition BINGO for math today. They didn't know it, but they were practicing reading numbers 1 through 10. They got an unplanned lesson in probability at the same time. After at least 50 spins, the number 6 had not come up so I erased another number on the spinner and changed it to 6. Still no luck! I ended up putting the number 6 in 4 different spots before we finally spun a 6! Linda Mayes, a reading coach in the school district, introduced writer's workshop to the students today. She related it to Santa's workshop in that the elves don't just shout, "I'm done!" and then sit and do nothing -- they keep working! There were some really nice sentences being written. Even students who didn't know all of their letter sounds at least knew the beginning sound for each word in their sentence. It was a great start!