This Week...

In Reader's Workshop the students reviewed the fifth element of the Reading Big 5, Author's Purpose. We created a "PIE" to demonstrate Author's Purpose elements further.

The students finished up the Literature Circle book, Frindle.

The students learned a new strategy, Puzzle Search, to practice their spelling words.

The students researched the general information on their state for the State Fair Project. They will continue researching next week, as well.

Grades

Hello Students and Parents. The students received an updated grade for language arts/social studies today. They should be bringing it home to get signed. Please be mindful that most instruction and assessments are differentiated and individualized to meet the needs of each student- so every student can be successful in class at their level. Thanks!

State Fair Project

The State Fair Project was introduced on Monday this week. Each student was assigned a partner and a state. Each partnership is responsible to:

•Write a letter to the tourism department of the state requesting information for the project

•Research general information about the state

•Plan a vacation in their state (using the tourism information they receive)

•Write a paper about a historically famous person from the state

•Write a newspaper articles about a significant event in the state

Each group mailed out their tourism letter on Wednesday. We hope to receive information back! Next week we will start researching our states!

After each component of the project is complete we will have a State Fair where each partnership will present their state. Almost every state will be represented at the State Fair between the four 5/6 language arts/social studies classes.

For the State Fair each partnership will need a three-sided poster board. 

Word Work Assessment Tomorrow!

This week the class learned and practiced a new strategy for their word work. The students effectively quizzed one another using white boards. Tomorrow is their word work assessment.

5 Regions of the U.S. Presentations

Last week all the groups presented their projects to the rest of the class. Every student taught the rest of the class about their region and learned about the other regions from the other groups. Overall, all the groups did very well!

The 5 Regions of the United States Project

The past few days the students have been working on a project of the 5 regions of the United States. Today we finished the project and tomorrow they will present their posters to the rest of the class. The students worked very hard and did an excellent job collaborating for this project.

Daily 5 Friday's

Every Friday we have Daily 5 in Language Arts. Daily 5 includes literacy strategies including: read to self, read to someone, listen read, word work (vocabulary), and writing center. In addition to these 5 strategies I include iReady, a computer program that works on reading skills specifically for that individual student based on previous assessment.

Buddy Read:

Listen Read:

iReady:

Word Work (spelling)

Hello! Every week the students receive new word work (spelling words) to practice. The past three weeks of word work we have practiced many strategies to learn our words. Some of the strategies include:

1. cut and sort
2. rainbow write
3. ABC order
4. story, story
5. sentence, please
6. comic strip
7. sign words

These strategies are practiced in class and the students are encouraged to practice and study at home.