update 12-19

Our book talks finished today!  Those were a great success and have given us many new books to want to read.

As a final wrap of our quarter, all students reflected on their writing and three writing pieces are on their way home today for you check out.  They all had to write what they are proud of as writers and what they need to continue to work on.  Enjoy these!

We all created biography slideshows in class.  Check out the Google Site for each class to view your child's project.

Mrs. Skeels
Mrs. Will
Dr. Stoyle

New Reading Counts goals have been set for 3rd quarter as well and are in each child's planner.  Happy Holidays and enjoy winter break with your families and friends!

12-14

Our unit with Social Studies has ended on Ancient Civilizations.  The kids made colorful brochures showcasing two of the characteristics of each civilization along with what they learned about them.  Also included is a map and timeline.

This week, we moved into biographies as we continue to read informational text.  Main idea, cause and effect, and close reading the text were all worked on.  To showcase our learning, the kids are working on digital biography projects that are due next week.  I made a template on Google Slides and then each kid has the task of making it their own.  Wow, are they amazing so far!  Ask your child to show it to you on Google Classroom.  

In writing, we are continuing to work on writing to a prompt.  Today, the kids had to write about how each biography person was successful, focusing in on traits and accomplishments.  Each child made a graphic organizer before writing.  Below is a list of the traits we came up with.  Tomorrow, we are going to color code our responses to help analyze what we need to revise.  

 

The Reading Counts program was not working for over a week, but has finally been fixed.   Each child's progress for Reading Counts this quarter will be reviewed with me tomorrow.  Reading Counts goals are due by 12/20.

update 12-6

We have moved into informational text.  Last week, we learned all about animals helping humans while reading and writing in class.  This week, we are doing a collaborative unit with Social Studies and Mrs. Will about ancient civilizations.  We learned all about the ancient Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas. To show our learning, we showcased it in several ways.  Two ways were visuals and one was through an e-book. (To see all e-books, ask your child to show you on Google Classroom.)  See the samples below.  

Ebook Sample from Mrs. Will's Class

Ebook Sample from Mrs. Skeels' Class

Ebook Sample from Dr. Stoyle's Class

In writing, we are working on writing using evidence and adding direct quotations from the text to add prove to our thinking.  We color-coded them to see where we needed to add more information and then wrote out our changes.    See the sample below: