update 10-26

We are rolling in fiction! The kids have been loving reading in class and are so excited about books!  I sent home at the end of last week a writing reflection with your child.  Make sure you ask them about it if you have not seen it.

This quarter we will be focusing on comparing two texts in the same genre for fiction, structure of stories (problem, rising action, resolution), and comparing and contrasting themes, settings, characters, or plot.  This week we started with traditional literature and read some folktales.  Next week, we move into realistic fiction.  Today in class, kids had to compare and contrast the folktales.  We had some creative responses!



In writing, we started writing narratives.  We talked about small moments and had to choose a person that matters to us.  Then, we visualized and chose some small moments or events related to that person to write about.  Tomorrow, we write about a place that matters and zoom in on a small moment.

We also took Book Shelfies.  Those are attached and adorable!  Feel free to email me a selfie of you with a favorite book and I will print it and add you to our display.

The last exciting part is that I am letting kids sign up to be the Teacher's Assistant one day.  This means they get to help me direct the class, pass out papers, give directions, etc.  I am looking forward to it!  Ask your child if he/she signed up to do it.

update 10-20

1st quarter ends today!  We had a great day cleaning out and reflecting on our quarter in writing.  Your child is bringing home a letter today that shows their reflection as writers.  Attached to the letter are some samples of their writing pieces from the quarter.  We also went to the computer lab for kids to choose one piece to further revise and submit for publication (for me to grade).

Early this week, the kids also chose a skill to work on regarding informational text.  See sample work below.  One is on main idea, the other vocabulary, and lastly summarizing.


Annotation is a skill that we have also worked on to show our thinking as reading.  See an example below.

This week in class we finished up informational text with a skill review, summative, informational book talk, and lots of choice reading time.  We practiced presenting our informational book talks to a small group with the goal of getting kids excited and wanting to read our books.  Kids gave each other feedback and should have brought that home to show you.  The book projects were turned in yesterday and fabulous! See pics below.

Next week, we start back into fictional text and will be comparing characters, setting, plot, and theme.  Reading Counts continues into the second quarter and kids will be making goals for themselves based on progress from 1st quarter.  Please check their planners to see their goals.

update 10-11

Next week is the last week of the first quarter!  I can't believe it!  This week, students self-selected a topic to read and learn more about from the choices of:  pollution, eclipses, and climate change.  They read articles with the purpose of reading for causes and effects.  We used Google Classroom to take notes on these topics.  Book projects are due next Thursday, 10/19.

We continue to focus on main idea, vocabulary, text structure, summarizing and looking for details.  Using our informational books, we looked for VIPs or very important points to remember.  This helped us stay focused and remember what the books were about.  See the sample below.

In Google Classroom, we took notes this week which the kids loved.  Check out this sample too and ask your child which topic they learned about.

This week, we also had a day where students self-selected skills they wanted to work on based on some independent work comple

ted in class.  After working on the skill, they had to share with the class what they learned.  We ended with students writing reflections in their notebooks.  See sample whiteboards below.

Reflection:

update 10-4

Reading:  We continue our work with informational text this week.  The two big skills we covered are learning how to annotate plus main idea and details.  This week, are focus was on animals.  Each group learned about either sharks, ants, wolves, or pandas the first half of the week.  Today and into the rest of the week, kids are reading and learning about Gray Whales, Birds of Flight, Life in the Sea, and Plants/Animals of Antarctica.  Not only did kids engage in conversation with each other about their books, but they also learned to Jigsaw.  Jigsaw means to teach others about your topic.  The pictures below show us teaching and sharing about what we read.  Since we are reading informational text in class, your child should be reading 20 minutes each day at home of their choice book.  


Writing:  We continued to work on our expert writing pieces.  Yesterday, we learned what elaboration means and tried it in our writing.  Also, we talked about the difference between run-ons and fragments.  Our goal is to write detailed sentences that clearly share our thoughts.    We completed these on Google Classroom.  Ask your child what he/she wrote about!   Our next writing pieces will  focus on using informational text and more than one source.