Then it was off to visit four centers for the morning. The children designed sassy ties like Mr. Slinger's or movie star sun glasses and purple plastic purses like Lilly's. They played games like Chrysanthemum's family did to cheer her up. Twister and Parcheesi were favorites. At another center the kids played Kevin Henkes Bingo as a way to review all of the interesting facts they had learned about the author and his mouse books. Finally they watched some of the books on video while they enjoyed "cheesy" snacks. Then it was a cheesy pizza for lunch in celebration of all the mouse characters.
Each of the children has received their own personal mouse puppet this week, sewed by our own Para Extraordinaire Lee Cordoza. The children have been using these little puppets as pointers to keep their place in reading and as their own little puppet character as they read. Just ask them their character's name and they can all tell you!
On Friday in the afternoon different first grade classes did different activities but many of them performed the Readers' Theatre scripts that they have been so faithfully practicing all week. Many of the groups combined the puppets that they had made as a family project to act out the scenes as the children read. Finally many of the classes made mouse shaped cookie snacks. These final few days of this author study will be spent on completing a portfolio piece as a readers response to a single book or books across the author study. It has been so much fun to spend time with an author and illustrator that the children have so loved!
On the first page they drew a triangle and recorded the characters, setting and the problem in the story.
On the next page they drew a large rectangle and drew the events. Some wrote three events and others wrote four or six events, depending on the action in the story. 
On the last page the children drew a circle and inside that ending shape, they wrote the solution to the problem in their story. In this way they are transferring the organization of the retelling of the Kevin Henkes' stories into their own reading lives.
In the beginning Wemberly Worried was worried about everything. She was unique because she worried a lot. She worried about big things, little things, and things in between. Wemberly worried in the morning. She worried at night. And she worried throughout the day. And she worried about her doll Petal. 
At the end Mrs. Peachum said, "Come back tomorrow!" Then Wemberly said, "Don't worry. I'll come back tomorrow." And when she got home Wemberly, her mom and dad danced around in a circle.
Remember when I told you that have you ever been worried a lot? Well I have. When my mom goes in the car washer I get scared, but things come our okay. If you have things that you were worried about they will come out okay.
The room was full of artifacts to support the learning that is being integrated. For instance, it is obvious how the day is integrated when you look at the essential questions posted each day. 
You can see some of the earlier mini-lessons as you read some of the charts that are hanging around the room. 
As students completed their 
At the same time, Carrie, pulled a different small group to go over testing strategies of a state assessment-style non-fiction test. I am assuming this group was pulled together after a task analysis of last week's assessment to work with the students that had specific difficulties with specific types of non-fiction questions.
The point is that both of these small groups are off the topic that is echoing across the day!
Mini-lesson: The teachers began with connecting today's lesson with what the students were doing in reading and what they are doing in Science, which is a habitat and life cycles unit. For the teach the teachers are using butterflies as their example of a topic for writing a report. The students have plenty of background knowledge for this example because they are raising butterflies during Science. The teachers have a seed journal where they have been taking notes about caterpillars and butterflies. As the students begin their writing, they will each choose different animals to write a report on its habitat and life cycle. Some of the previous lessons are obvious, both from charts in the room and the teacher's seed journal example. Today's lesson was on how to organize the notes from the seed journal. The teacher thinks aloud her decision to start with a chapter on "Appearance" and then numbers her notes so that the sequence makes sense. For the active involvement she then turns to a new page in the seed journal where she has taken notes and has the children "turn and talk" about how they would organize this page of information. The link gives the children the facts they need to use the information they have just learned as they go into the work session. 
