Such a Character!

In Reader's Workshop, we moving along in our study of character traits. This week we continued to focus on character change and character traits.  Our emphasis is on finding specific text based evidence to show what a character says or does that demonstrates his/her character traits.  To that end, every student chose a favorite character from one of the shared readings we did in class or from one of their independent reading books. First, the filled out a graphic organizer to help them structure their thoughts and list character traits and evidence from the text to support those treats.  Then, students designed rough drafts of a final poster highlighting their work.  They are having a blast designing the most creative and unique posters. I told them that all I required was that they write three character traits and support those traits with evidence from the text. The rest I am leaving up to the kids' imaginations, and boy, they are not disappointing.  Once the projects are done, I will post pictures here.  You're going to love them!  Here's some of the children's work in progress; you can see how truly unique each and every one of them is turning out to be:

Everyone is also hard at work learning what real writers do in Writer's Workshop. This week we learned how to write dynamic leads and to write fast and furious to get all our great stories down on paper.  We rehearsed and rehearsed our stories orally with our writing partners trying on new leads, adding details, and exploring new endings that would really grab the attention of our listeners and readers.  At this point, nearly everyone has added lots of wonderful details, edited, revised, and rehearsed their stories, and are ready to publish them! What an exciting day! I am amazed at how far your children have come and how they have grown as writers in such a short period of time.

As our science unit on rocks and minerals continues, we focused on igneous rocks, doing several experiments comparing extrusive and intrusive igneous rocks like scoria, granite, obsidian, and pumice. 

In math we took the mid-module quiz as the halfway mark in Unit One.  I am keeping all tests in student's cumulative files.  I will share grades with you during conferences.  If, however, you would like to know your child's grade now, please let me know.  If I feel your child is struggling with the concepts in this unit, I will alert you and will ensure that Mrs. Pope, who is with us two days a week for math, works with your child in small group.  Students began learning the associative and distributive properties using arrays, pictures, tape diagrams, and number bonds to help them. 

We are just about finished reading The Witches as our shared read aloud. Next we will be moving on to my all time favorite book by my all time favorite author in the world, Kate DiCamillo, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Again, I would ask that while we read this book aloud, you not read it to your child or let your child take it out from the library. We will be doing a lot of predicting in this story, and I'd like to keep the ending, in particular, a surprise for our students.

Best of all, the children were rewarded after filling up their classroom bucket!  They got to spend time on the Chrome books playing games, going on Razz Kids, and having fun!

On Friday, the kids all got together and sang Happy Birthday to my daughter, Becky, who turned 22.  We we sent it to her in a text. 

Spelling test is postponed until Monday due to the Rosh Hashanah holiday this week.

Enjoy what is supposed to be a gorgeous weekend!