Author: smossman93

Once upon a time, six little bears sat around the table as their three teachers bears got settled. We began the day by one teacher bear, Julia having us writing into the morning by writing about the first time that we had been to a place. We, little bears, were to focus on the sensory details that we remembered about being in that place for the first time. Each of the bears, teachers and students alike wrote furiously about the first time they had been to a place. After our time was up, each bear shared a small excerpt from their writing.

Then one brave little bear, Caitlyn, shared out her digital citing from the previous session. Sadly the little bear author of this post was not present, so I listened enraptured by little bear Caitlyn’s recitation of the previous meeting.

After little bear Caitlyn’s digital citings, we six little bears and three big bears read over big bear Terri’s assignment on Poe’s stories and irony. We looked at a student’s writing where they read several of Poe’s stories but the endings were cut off. The students then had to write an ironic ending to the story. We bears, big and little, discussed what we noticed in the writing and pointed out the strengths, areas of improvement, and next steps in the assignment.

We, little bears and three of the big bears, spread out around the room and set up stations to showcase student work from our inquiry projects. Then all the bears went around the room and left comments on sticky notes on each other’s work to comment on what we noticed and what we wondered about each of our exhibits. Once we had all left feedback and had a time to review it, we came together as a big bear group and reflected on the carousel activity.

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Then big bear, Julia, got up and showed us her inquiry blog post about her RAFT assignment that she had given to her classes. She walked us through the outline and what steps she had taken when she conducted her inquiry. Big bear Terri then made a list of all the necessary components for us little bears inquiry posts for next session.

All the bears came together again around the table to watch a Ted talk about gratitude. After the Ted talk, we wrote about gratitude as our writing out for the day. After we spent some time with our writing, the bears took turns sharing our snippets of what we are grateful for. With our gratitude writing shared, we closed out our session and prepared for our next meeting on December 7th.