And so it begins....

March 1st. The beginning of reading month. Although I feel that reading should be a focus year round in schools, I am glad it has its own special month where students are challenged to read a little more than they normally would and ones school may offer special activities to highlight the joy of reading. I have created two challenges for this month. One involves reading and the other, writing.

The reading challenge is also a challenge for me. I have challenged myself to not give students review worksheets as seat work and in return my students are to do at least one reading passage a day on read theory. If you are not familiar with the site, you need to check it out. Needless to say, day one and my students and I are hooked. Less work for me to correct and more knowledge they are gaining while being exposed to various types of texts and test like questions at their grade level. 

The second challenge is our Slice of Life challenge. We have been doing Slice of Life every Tuesday on our class wiki as a mentoring project with the fourth graders we mentor in writing. The students are very familiar with the process. Since not all of my students have access to the internet at home, I am challenging my students to write in special Slice of Life notebooks. Each student has set a goal, and I am excited to follow their process. On top of that, I have set a goal for myself...31 consecutive days of writing on this blog.