Oct 31-Nov
This past week, students focused on learning the differences between first person, third person, limited, and third person omniscient narration. Ask your child whose perspective are they gaining through the narration, and what kind of information are they gaining and not gaining.
This week, students will be writing a script, in first person, introducing the protagonist of their novel chosen for their story boards. They will be practicing delivering the important story elements of the book read by rehearsing his/her speech for next Monday, Nov 7th.
(All are welcome!) Please send the story boards in Tuesday, Nov 1st. This Character Wax Museum will take place in the MPR at 9:30-10:30. Please have your child come dressed as his/her character with one prop. (book, backpack, wand, etc.)
Students are continuing their 40 book challenge and reading comprehension goal based on the DRA levels and Raz kids. Students have set a personal reading goal to accomplish each week including reading a minimum of 150 minutes per week at home, and discussing what they read with a classmate, parents, and/or friend. These are being tracked in leadership binders.
Students are continuing to work on language standards within both Reader's and Writer's Workshop including personification, grammar, and convention rules.
Last, your child is continuing his/her small guided reading group within our workshop. Each group is on chapter 6 of their novels. Ask you child what predictions they have about chapters 7 this week. (Books are different for some groups) Within these groups, we are focusing on applying our newly learned reading comprehension strategies, discussing our findings, making predictions, as well as, discussing unknown words and using context clues to help us determine the meaning.
Raz kinds has been set up according to your child's lexile range taken from the fall NWEA data. They should be reading Raz Kids at home.
WRITERS WORKSHOP
Students are coming to a close with his/her personal narrative in Scripsi. We will be working on editing these for proper capitals, punctuation, and spelling according to third and fourth grade CCSS.
After this week, stories will be homework for those who are not yet finished. All stories must be submitted online, Nov16th, in order to receive a free copy. Also, even if you do not wish to purchase additional copies, the forms must be signed and sent back to school, saying that you read each available option. These forms will be sent home Monday, Oct. 31.
Last, in order to assess growth on student's personal writing goal, students will be showing what they know, by taking one hour and writing a personal narrative on a previous Halloween or holiday experience. These will be used to assess growth of their writing thus far this quarter. We will be using these for our authors wall, for publishing a class book, as well as being placed in our leadership binders for November's conferences.