We began class by recapping what we learned on Friday when we watched "America before Columbus", focusing on the stark difference between Europe and North America at the time...and how the mistakes the Europeans had made they then brought over to America and repeated them here (over fishing/hunting, polluting the water, etc.). Then we began reading about the Eastern Woodlands in our textbook, focusing on how the Native American tribes in this region were impacted by their environment. Homework: Native American project due on Monday 11/21
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Today after starting class with Harry Potter (love how much the kids are loving it!) we went into our writing lesson. Today I taught kids 2 more strategies for generating narrative story ideas and then we talked about one way to raise the level of our writing. The lesson today was called "Dreaming the Dream of the Story" and it was about how it is important to write in such a way that your readers are on the story journey right along with you. For example, instead of writing "I am sad." a writer could write, "I brush a tear with the back of my hand, while biting my lip to keep it from quivering." I also often call this lesson Show, not Tell. We used examples from Harry Potter as well to show how JK Rowling uses this technique in her writing.
Homework: J1-J4 Verb Tense Review (I will be doing a mini-lesson on this tomorrow!) We took our IXL quiz in LA- many students struggled- some because they didn't do any practice this week...the rest because either they made silly mistakes, or they need more work on the skill. I will be teaching a small group lesson on Monday in WIN for any student who got a 7 or below on the quiz. We also read for 10 minutes in Harry Potter- the kids are all loving this book- even those that have read it before! And, of course, because it was Friday we had a special Halloween themed fun film fest Friday. In Social Studies we started watching the movie, "America Before Columbus" which was made by National Geographic and incredibly well-done. We will refer to this movie throughout our Native American unit, Explorer unit and even the Colonial Times unit! All students should be working on both their book talks and their Native American project at home...also- please take a look at the planners- we gave updated missing/late/redo work print outs to the kids today! We would love to have them get a lot of this late work done over the weekend! We continued to talk about tribes and how they each had to adapt to their environment- we had a lot of fun each taking different roles in the tribes and discussing ways in which we thought we would have attempted to adapt. The kids did some awesome thinking today!!
Homework: Work on Native American project due 11/21 Today I introduced Harry Potter as our next read aloud book. We discussed the various purposes of read aloud, most important being that I can model what deep reading looks like and different strategies that kids can use when they are reading. I also love having books that everyone in the class as a common text that we can refer to all year long when learning new reading and writing skills. Harry Potter is one of those books that literally has almost every literary skill we will be learning about this year....and I have found that fewer and fewer kids each year have read the books! At the end of class we had read the first chapter, which was 17 pages long. I had the kids brainstorm and create a list of everything we learned in the first 17 pages- she the picture of our list below. I pointed out to them that this is what they should be doing when they are reading at home...one doesn't have to wait to finish a book before they get started on a book talk. They can be asking themselves every night when they finish reading- What did I learn today? and then do some thinking around different actions/conversations that they read and ask themselves what those behaviors/conversations tell them about the character(s).
Homework: IXL G10G4 and L1- quiz tomorrow! Fill out your reading log and work on your book talk! We continued to learn today about the amazing impact farming had on the world and then we moved into specific Native American tribes and talking about the different ways the land impacted how these tribes lived. My morning class (Ely homeroom) didn't seem very engaged today in the lesson, so I tried to spice things up and change my lesson for the afternoon social studies class...I think my homeroom would tell you that we had some very engaging (and at times funny!) discussions using students in the class as different characters in our Native American tribe. I def. learned from this and will be trying to make tomorrow's morning social studies class more engaging for the Ely's- never like staring into a sea of bored and disengaged faces when you are trying to lead a discussion!
Homework: Native American Project due Monday, Nov. 21 We finished Home of the Brave today- what an awesome book- I think the students would agree with me that this story was incredibly moving and well-written. Today was a reading day and our focus is writing about our reading...therefore after we finished the book I asked the students to do some writing about the book. I gave them a number of ideas about what they could focus their writing on- my one rule was that their writing must require them to THINK. They didn't like this so much because thinking is HARD! I want to move them past just writing predictions, their opinion of the book, and short summaries. This was not an easy task for them. On Friday we will be looking at some of our written entries and talking about ways in which we could improve them and things that we did well.
Homework: IXL: G1-G4 (Plural Nouns) and L1 (Helping Verbs), Theme Book Talk, Keeping a reading log this week Today we recapped our lessons from last week about how the early people first arrived in North America and how they used the land for survival. We then read and discussed how lives changed after the Ice Age ended- particularly once they discovered the wonders of FARMING! We will continue learning about just how amazing and life changing farming was tomorrow in class. I apologize for not posting pictures of today's notes- I totally forgot to a photo before I left school (and now I'm at the hair salon!) I'll make sure I post them tomorrow!
Homework: work on your Native American project Today I taught a mini lesson on using "turning points" as a strategy to generate ideas when you are writing a narrative story. I shared some examples from my own life and then had kids brainstorm silently before turning and sharing some ideas with a partner. After the lesson I sent kids back to their seats to begin generating a list of as many personal narrative story ideas as possible. Homework: IXL: plural nouns and helping verbs; Theme book talk; remember to fill out the reading log this week every time you read your book! Today we spent class going over the Native American project that students will be working on at home- due Monday 11/21. Please see the links below to the product descriptor and rubrics (use the tabs on the bottom of the document to navigate to the dif. project tabs), and links to the checklists for each individual project choices.
Product Descriptor and Rubrics Checklists for students as they work on their chosen project: |
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