Thank You Mrs. Stolle!

Friday was Mrs. Stolle's last day in our classroom. She is an awesome teacher and we will all really miss her!

Thank you Mrs. Stolle!








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New Reading Homework

Starting this week, our reading homework will look a little different.  The homework will be a menu. Your child will be allowed to choose 3 items from the menu to complete for their homework!  They must choose one item from each level.  The homework items can be completed on any piece of paper you can find at home! :)  Just attach it to the homework menu before turning it in. View our homework menu below. (Click the title to print the menu...in case your copy is missing!)

Reading Homework Menu

 

 

ANOTHER Author Study!

Last week, we finished up our author study on Cynthia Rylant.  I think everyone really enjoyed all of  her books.  We voted on our favorite Cynthia Rylant book and the winner was...

The Old Woman Who Named Things!

 

Ask your child to SUMMARIZE this book for you!

 

 

This week we are beginning a new author study on Patricia Polacco.  She has MANY great books!  We began the unit by looking at her website to learn more about her and what she writes about.  She has a really great website.  Check it out!

 

Patricia Polacco's Website

 

We will be reading many of Patricia Polacco's books this week.  We will also discuss how her books are similar or different to Cynthia Rylant's books.  

 

 

 

In Writing we are starting something new and exciting....Poetry!  The kids are very excited about it, and so am I.  They are already surprising me with some amazing poems!  We hope to keep our poems and make our very own poetry books at the end of this unit! 

 

We began the poetry unit by looking at an object like a scientist and then looking at that same object like a poet.  We used the paper below to help us with that.

 

Poet's Notes

 

Here is  also a blank note form for scientists notes/poet's notes:

Poets Notes-Blank

 

 

You can print these out at home and continue to write some poetry!

 

 

 

 

Moody Gardens

We had a great field trip to Moody Gardens! I think everyone enjoyed it and learned a lot!

We started our day with a LONG trip on the bus.




We watched an amazing 3D movie about monarch butterflies.




We went on a guided tour of the aquarium.












Everyone was able to visit the touch tank!




We ended our trip with a fun game of "Let's Make A Seal."




It was a great trip!

We want to thank LEAF for funding this field trip!

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Author Study

This week we started our author study on Cynthia Rylant! We are adding everything we do to a big foldable. Everyone was able to decorate their foldable.









Today, we compared some of the Cynthia Rylant books that we have read. We also wrote a summary about the book we read today.













Ask your child about the books we read this week!

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What are we learning this week?

This week in reading...

We are starting a new unit!  My favorite unit... author studies!  We will study different stories by the same author.  This is so much fun!

Our objectives during the unit:

*Study the biography of the author to understand why he/she writes about certain topics.
*Discuss similarities and differences across several books by the author.
*Notice how the author uses illustrations, and language in his/her stories.
*Compare two different authors and their work. 

Throughout the unit we will also continue to discuss and use the reading strategies that we have been working on all year, like:

*Connections

*Schema

*Predictions

*Visualizing

*Character Traits

*Author's Purpose

*Sequence

*Summary

*Questioning

*Main Idea

*Context Clues

 

Wow!!  That's a lot! :)

 

The first author we will study is Cynthia Rylant!  Check out her website to learn more about this amazing author!

 

Cynthia Rylant

 

 

 

 

This week in writing...

 

We will continue to work on writing our all-about books.  These are non-fiction books on a topic that they are very familiar with.  Take a look at the checklist that we use in class to make sure we have everything we need in our all about books.  (Ask your child about this at home!)

 

 

We will be choosing one of our all-about books to publish soon!