This week we were joined virtually by two students from Harwood's "She's the First" group, which sponsors girls in Ethiopia and Uganda who are the first in their families to attend high school.  Rubi Murphy and former WES student Lucy Sullivan read our class the book Malala's Magic Pencil by Malala Yousafzai, about the author's own experiences as a girl in Pakistan and her wish for a magic pencil to change the world for the better.  Although she never gets a magic pencil, she realizes she can bring about change using a real pencil and her written words.  Children enjoyed hearing the story and were particularly aghast at the notion of girls being unable to attend school in some parts of the world.  Thanks to Lucy and Rubi for sharing with us!

 For the last several weeks we have been working on opinion writing.  We began by talking about what an opinion is (what someone thinks, there is no right or wrong answer) and compared opinions to facts.  We have spent lots of time at the start of our day playing "Would You Rather..", expressing our opinions by moving to one side of the room or the other, and then sharing reasons for our choices.  We play this game with a wide range of questions from "Would you rather play in the snow or the mud?"  to "Would you rather have Piggy or Elephant come to your house?"  This is a fast-paced game that kids love to play and it has provided lots of practice not only thinking about opinions, but also backing them up with evidence.  

Once we mastered this quick way of sharing opinions and reasons orally we moved on to writing our opinions.  Kindergarteners have strong opinions which they love to share! This has made for some very focused writing.  Some of the topics we have written about have included favorite seasons, recess versus choice time, and the best pet.  We have also written opinions in response to several books, including "Henry and Mudge" by Cynthia Rylant and "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" by Mo Willems.