More editing of our scarology papers today! Students worked on beefing up their paragraphs. We also studied our sight words and worked on sentence of the week skills.
Tomorrow we will look at adding dialogue to our paragraphs which will go along with our sentence of the week work.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Monday, December 9, 2013
Dec 9, 2013: Scarology
Homework: Sentence of the Week
We started class out with some DEAR time and then practiced our sight words. We learned a new skill during sentence of the week. We learned how to use front-end dialogue, or how to write sentences with the spoken part written first. We will continue to practice this throughout the week.
We spent the second half of class reviewing what goes into every good paragraph, and what the difference is between narrative and expository writing. We then jumped on the computers to do some editing to our scarology stories. Everyone had to go through their paragraphs to make sure they had all of the elements of a good paragraph. They are....
- Topic sentence: Tells your reader what they will be reading about
- Supporting Details: 3-5 per paragraph that support the topic
- Concluding or transition sentence: Wraps up your idea/moves your reader onto what is happening next
- Transition words: Next, later, after, then....etc.
We will continue working on this tomorrow and will work on adding dialogue to our stories!
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Scarology Cont: Nov 13, 2013
We began a new read aloud today in class! The book we started is called Girl Stolen, by April Henry. So far it has us hooked! We left off on a cliffhanger so we might have to pick it right back up tomorrow! While reading today we jotted down notes about the characters we met, the setting, and some other important details. To sum it up, Cheyenne is a 16 year old blind girl that is accidentally kidnapped when Griffin, a confessed career criminal, steals her parents Escalade from a parking lot. At this point Griffin is freaking out about having Cheyenne and is very worried about what "Roy" (a character we don't know anything about yet) is going to do to him for messing up.....
After read aloud everyone practiced their sight words and then we worked on Sentence of the Week. What I found when looking at everyone's homework was that we need to remember that when using conjunctions you need to have a complete sentence on either side of the comma! We'll continue working on that tomorrow!
We finished up class by continuing to discuss scarology. We used this doc (not sure if you'll be able to open it or not). We talked about how a personal narrative is a TRUE story about the author! Some of you were wondering if you could embellish your scar stories but they need to be TRUE! We also talked about creating a good introduction that would suck your reader in. We'll keep working on this tomorrow as well and talk more about personal narratives.
No homework! Have a good night!
After read aloud everyone practiced their sight words and then we worked on Sentence of the Week. What I found when looking at everyone's homework was that we need to remember that when using conjunctions you need to have a complete sentence on either side of the comma! We'll continue working on that tomorrow!
We finished up class by continuing to discuss scarology. We used this doc (not sure if you'll be able to open it or not). We talked about how a personal narrative is a TRUE story about the author! Some of you were wondering if you could embellish your scar stories but they need to be TRUE! We also talked about creating a good introduction that would suck your reader in. We'll keep working on this tomorrow as well and talk more about personal narratives.
No homework! Have a good night!
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Scarology: Nov 12, 2013
We started class with DEAR today....
After DEAR we worked on our sight words and then got into sentence of the week! Our rule for this week was about conjunctions! What they are, when to use them, what punctuation to use with them, etc. Remember FANBOYS. (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So)
We also watched the School House Rock "Conjunction Junction" song, because it's awesome!
We finished up class by introducing our next big project, scarology! Scarology will be a personal narrative that students will write based on a scar that they have. We went through what a personal narrative is (a story about yourself) and the project rubric. Tomorrow when you get to class have listed what scar you would like to write about!
After DEAR we worked on our sight words and then got into sentence of the week! Our rule for this week was about conjunctions! What they are, when to use them, what punctuation to use with them, etc. Remember FANBOYS. (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So)
We also watched the School House Rock "Conjunction Junction" song, because it's awesome!
We finished up class by introducing our next big project, scarology! Scarology will be a personal narrative that students will write based on a scar that they have. We went through what a personal narrative is (a story about yourself) and the project rubric. Tomorrow when you get to class have listed what scar you would like to write about!
Monday, November 4, 2013
Sentence of the Week: Nov 4, 2013
Homework: Sentence of the Week, Reading Strategies Bookmark
After sight words we had our new sentence of the week skill. This week we are learning that for a sentence to be considered complete, it MUST have a subject (who or what the sentence is about) and a verb (what the subject is doing). Your homework for tomorrow is to create three new complete sentences and to label the subject and the verb.
We scored our last Boggle round from Friday, you guys are crazy good at this game! You found words that I hadn't come up with yet!
Finally, we finished up class by reviewing our reading strategies bookmark. Since a number of you had lost yours, if you do not have one your homework is also to complete one of these. You need to create a bookmark with the 6 reading strategies (3 on each side), with the name of the strategy and a picture to represent it.
WKCE testing tomorrow!
Friday, November 1, 2013
Sight Word Quiz! Nov 1, 2013
Welcome to November! We started class today with DEAR time. When we were done everyone begged for 5 more minutes of reading which was AWESOME! So we read for 5 more minutes.....
After DEAR we took our sight word quiz again. So next week we will compare the first sight word quiz we took with the new one to see all of the progress everyone has made!
We reviewed all of the requirements for the dream house project which is due Monday, so make sure you have all of the required materials! Use your checklist!
Since we have had such a long and funky week.....we finished up class today with a little brain break! (But really we were still doing Comm Arts....Shhh!) We played Boggle! I drew a Boggle board up on the whiteboard and everyone had to try to find as many words as they could out of the scrambled letters. You guys did AWESOME! We'll figure out the score on Monday!
After DEAR we took our sight word quiz again. So next week we will compare the first sight word quiz we took with the new one to see all of the progress everyone has made!
We reviewed all of the requirements for the dream house project which is due Monday, so make sure you have all of the required materials! Use your checklist!
Since we have had such a long and funky week.....we finished up class today with a little brain break! (But really we were still doing Comm Arts....Shhh!) We played Boggle! I drew a Boggle board up on the whiteboard and everyone had to try to find as many words as they could out of the scrambled letters. You guys did AWESOME! We'll figure out the score on Monday!
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Oct 31, 2013: Back to Comm Arts!
We finally had a somewhat normal comm arts class today! At the beginning of the week we had WKCE testing, and then we continued working on our dream houses. Today during 8th hour we had a normal comm arts class! We did some journaling, we had DEAR time, reviewed our sight words....it was fabulous!
Tomorrow we will have our sight words test to see how much better we have gotten since the beginning of the year! We will also practice our sentence of the week skills to review everything!
No homework! Happy Halloween!
Tomorrow we will have our sight words test to see how much better we have gotten since the beginning of the year! We will also practice our sentence of the week skills to review everything!
No homework! Happy Halloween!
Monday, October 28, 2013
Dream House Spec Sheet: Oct 28, 2013
Today in comm arts class we worked on our dream house spec sheets. We went over examples of actual real estate sheets and ones we created. We also reviewed step up to writing and how this could help us write our paragraphs.
As we discussed in class, the paragraphs on your spec sheets should persuade your buyer to want to buy your dream house so you need to use really good powerful words! Your paragraph is non-fiction though so you want to make sure that you are only including facts!
We will continue working on these tomorrow!
As we discussed in class, the paragraphs on your spec sheets should persuade your buyer to want to buy your dream house so you need to use really good powerful words! Your paragraph is non-fiction though so you want to make sure that you are only including facts!
We will continue working on these tomorrow!
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Oct 22, 2013 Dream Homes Continued
We continued working on our dream homes today! Yesterday during 8th hour everyone went outside and drew one room from their house to scale using chalk! This was especially helpful to some students who had a hard time picturing how big a meter was. Some needed to make their rooms smaller (a dog house shouldn't be the same size as a garage!) and some needed to make them much larger! (You do want to be able to fit a bed in your bedroom!) Here we are below...
Monday, October 21, 2013
Oct 21, 2013: Build your dream house!
Today we started a cross curricular project that promises to be awesome! The project we are working on is called "Dream House". This project focuses on combining aspects of math, science, and comm arts to create a real world experience.
Students will be building their "dream house" using a list of required items and land space that we have given them on a checklist (see dream home folder on homework doc). Obviously we are encouraging students to go above and beyond the required checklist...hint hint! But don't bite off more than you chew! Make sure to get all of the required items in your house before adding more!
Today we introduced the project with everyone in the auditorium.....
After going through the rules, expectations, ideas, and rubric behind the project, students went into the cafeteria to get started!!
We also did a walk through of what was happening, check out the kids hard at work!
Students will be building their "dream house" using a list of required items and land space that we have given them on a checklist (see dream home folder on homework doc). Obviously we are encouraging students to go above and beyond the required checklist...hint hint! But don't bite off more than you chew! Make sure to get all of the required items in your house before adding more!
Today we introduced the project with everyone in the auditorium.....
After going through the rules, expectations, ideas, and rubric behind the project, students went into the cafeteria to get started!!
We also did a walk through of what was happening, check out the kids hard at work!
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Visualization Practice: Oct 9, 2013
We started class with sight word practice and journaling. After these two activities we practiced our sentence of the week skill by correcting sentences. You guys are starting to get this down! We will have a quiz on this skill on Friday.
After this we went through a visualization activity. I gave students a very non-descriptive sentence and had them draw a picture. Basically every persons picture was completely different because there was no description to the sentence. I continued to reread the same sentence but each time I would add more descriptive words. Gradually everyone's pictures started to look more and more similar, until everyone had nearly identical pictures. The purpose of this activity was to show the value in descriptive writing. It tied in perfectly with what is going on in social studies as well. We will continue to practice this tomorrow.
Look for descriptive words in your reading and practice using it in your own writing!
After this we went through a visualization activity. I gave students a very non-descriptive sentence and had them draw a picture. Basically every persons picture was completely different because there was no description to the sentence. I continued to reread the same sentence but each time I would add more descriptive words. Gradually everyone's pictures started to look more and more similar, until everyone had nearly identical pictures. The purpose of this activity was to show the value in descriptive writing. It tied in perfectly with what is going on in social studies as well. We will continue to practice this tomorrow.
Look for descriptive words in your reading and practice using it in your own writing!
Monday, October 7, 2013
Welcome to the class! Oct 7, 2013
Homework: Sentence of the Week, finish Latin root/prefix story if you have not done so yet
So today we welcomed some new students to the class. We spent class today getting everyone acquainted to our normal classroom routines, getting notebooks set up, and making sure everyone was on the same page! Notebooks should have four sections in them: Notes, Vocab, S.O.W., and Sight Words.
After reviewing sight words, we had DEAR time and then learned a new Sentence of the Week skill. The skill this week was deciphering when to capitalize mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, etc. We learned that if you can replace mom or dad with a persons name and it makes sense, you capitalize it. If it doesn't make sense, leave it lowercase. Here is our sentence of the week. Your four new sentences are due tomorrow! Two sentences should show them with capital letters, and two should show them with lowercase letters.
Tomorrow students will teach each other any sentence of the week skills that the students in other classes have not yet learned so we can all be caught up with each other!
So today we welcomed some new students to the class. We spent class today getting everyone acquainted to our normal classroom routines, getting notebooks set up, and making sure everyone was on the same page! Notebooks should have four sections in them: Notes, Vocab, S.O.W., and Sight Words.
After reviewing sight words, we had DEAR time and then learned a new Sentence of the Week skill. The skill this week was deciphering when to capitalize mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, etc. We learned that if you can replace mom or dad with a persons name and it makes sense, you capitalize it. If it doesn't make sense, leave it lowercase. Here is our sentence of the week. Your four new sentences are due tomorrow! Two sentences should show them with capital letters, and two should show them with lowercase letters.
Tomorrow students will teach each other any sentence of the week skills that the students in other classes have not yet learned so we can all be caught up with each other!
Friday, October 4, 2013
Quiz Day: Oct 4, 2013
We started class by taking two quizzes! Not to worry, you all survived....First we took our sight words quiz. We did this a little bit differently. Since everyone has different words that they are working on we had students speak their words into a voice recording app on the ipods and then use their headphones to give themselves their own quiz. After recording themselves speaking their words, they use the ipods to go through the words one by one and write them down. Here they are in action....
After the quizzes we worked on our root and prefix stories. Students need to take the list of prefixes and root words that we have been working on and learning and incorporate all of them into a story. This will show us that they not only know what the prefix means but that they can also use the words in context. I have been VERY impressed with what I've been seeing so far!
There is no homework, have a great weekend!
After the quizzes we worked on our root and prefix stories. Students need to take the list of prefixes and root words that we have been working on and learning and incorporate all of them into a story. This will show us that they not only know what the prefix means but that they can also use the words in context. I have been VERY impressed with what I've been seeing so far!
There is no homework, have a great weekend!
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Root Word and Prefix Practice! Oct 2, 2013
Today in class we started with our usuals, sight words and DEAR time. During DEAR students needed to keep track of any "visual" words they came across while reading, and jot them down in their readers response journals. We had some great examples!
After this everyone reviewed their prefix and root words flashcards. You guys are rockstars! I am amazed at how well you all know all of your prefixes and root words!! Go you! We played a game where everyone was split up into groups. We would put a prefix and root on the board. After showing us what it meant on a mini whiteboard, the teams had to come up with sentences where they used the prefix or root word corretly and in context. Check it out....
We also talked about this fun reading challenge called read across America! Each state features a book that takes place in that state. Have fun and try to get through all 50!
After this everyone reviewed their prefix and root words flashcards. You guys are rockstars! I am amazed at how well you all know all of your prefixes and root words!! Go you! We played a game where everyone was split up into groups. We would put a prefix and root on the board. After showing us what it meant on a mini whiteboard, the teams had to come up with sentences where they used the prefix or root word corretly and in context. Check it out....
We also talked about this fun reading challenge called read across America! Each state features a book that takes place in that state. Have fun and try to get through all 50!
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