Mid November Check-In: Language Arts

The last two weeks we have been learning about voice and fluency in language arts. The students have been writing descriptive essays to demonstrate their voice about a memorable moment in their lives. Below is an example of a student's writing process.

To aid in the writing process along the way the students have had mini lessons on: adjectives, punctuation, and the elements of fluency (rate, phrasing, intonation, pausing, stress, and integration). Below is a poster we made during a fluency lesson.

Additionally, we have begun new guided literature circle books: Cat and Rat, Lon Po Po, and Dragonwings. Our book selections tie in perfectly to the Culture Festival coming up; the fifth and sixth graders will be representing the continent Asia at the Culture Festival. My homeroom will be specially learning and presenting the Chinese lunar and zodiac calendar.

The past few weeks the students have been practicing their word work with many different strategies in class and at home. It has been very evident the more they practice and the more they engage in the different guided strategies the better they do on their Friday assessments. Some of the fun strategies the students have been using these past two weeks include: sort, rewrite, rainbow write, sentence please, comic strip, and quiz neighbor. Below is a student's rainbow words and comic strip.