Research

We have been doing a lot of research in writing class and we will continue that into next week with our animal research project. The kids are doing great!

This week we finished up talking about main idea and moved on to learning about how to read and think about nonfiction stories and articles.

Today we learned how to stop and use Think Notes to write our thinking.

We read a great article from National Geographic Kids and used our think notes to stop and write our thoughts, new learning, connections, or surprising information. The class did great!

To see some more great articles, visit the National Geographic Kids website below!

National Geographic Kids

Another great place to look at cool articles is Pebble Go!  Visit the site below.  (You will need a username and password.  The kids already know what it is!)

Pebble Go

Main Idea

Next week we will begin learning about main idea.  Look below to see the notes about where to find the main idea.

Check out the song below that tells you more about main idea!

Here's another great video that shows you how to find the main idea! Check it out!

Author's Purpose and Research Writing

We had some fun this week learning about author's purpose.

We played the pie game...serving pies with different titles on to the correct author's purpose plate.

We also read some short stories and worked together to decide the author's purpose.  They used the iPads to scan a QR code to check their answers!

In writing we began researching penguins.  They were split into groups and each group was assigned a different penguin to research. The final project will be a poster with all of their information!

It was a great week of learning!

Author's Purpose

This week we will be learning about the author's purpose for writing a text. The chart below shows what we will be discussing in class this week!

Check out the song below that talks about author's purpose!

Fiction or Nonfiction?

We have been studying the differences between fiction and nonfiction.  To make it more fun we played several games about the differences between the two types of literature.

Nonfiction Text Features

Want to see what we will be learning about next week?!  Check out the information below so you can really be ready for class!!


Next week we will be learning about nonfiction text features. The picture below shows you a few examples of the features we will discuss and use in class:

Watch this video to learn more about each text feature!

Visualizing and Poetry

This week we learned that when we read we visualize what is happening in the story. We make a movie in our minds.  This helps us remember,  understand, and connect to what we read. We practiced this with our special "visualizing tubes."

I also read aloud a story and a few poems so the students could practice visualizing. They drew their mental images and compared them to the real pictures in the book.  They did great with this!

During stations, we now have Raz-Kids up and running. Everyone gets a chance to get on Raz-Kids to read and complete a comprehension activity.  You can do this at home too! Click the link below. Usernames and passwords were sent home in daily folders, but let me know if you need it again.

Raz-Kids

In writing, we are working on writing our own poems.  The kids are writing some AMAZING poems!  I'm so impressed with their writing.  We decided that we need to make our very own poetry book when we are finished fixing up our poems.  Look for our poetry book coming soon! 

Character Traits and Figurative Language

This week we read a lot of fiction stories and studied the characters to see what traits described them. We learned to pay attention to what the character says and does to learn more about their traits.
The students created character traits trading cards for familiar characters that we had previously read about.  We then played a matching game with our character trait cards!

In writing we are getting ready to write some poetry!  Before we could write some really great poems, we learned about the figurative language we could use in our poems.


Watch this video below for a review of what we learned in class!








Check out this fun video that shows some examples of figurative language from popular movies!

More Fun With Inferring

We are continuing to work on inferring the meaning of text and unknown words in class.  We had some fun this week making inferences about pictures and mystery animals!  We also read some animal poems and looked carefully for clues so we could infer what animal the poem was about.  Ask your child about this!

Another fun game was reading clues and looking at pictures. The students had to make  inferences about what they read and check their answers by using the iPads to scan a QR code!

In writing, we learned how to revise and edit our stories.  It was fun to work with an "editor" to make our writing better.

It was a fun week!

Inferring

We have been working on making inferences when we read for a couple weeks now.  We learned that we need to use our schema and text evidence to make a good inference.

Check out the fun video below to see Kermit the Frog and Cookie Monster play a mystery box inferring game! :)

Word Sorts and Writing!

We have been working hard on sorting words according to their word family.  Every Monday, the kids get a word sort that is a "good-fit" for them.  They cut out the words and sort them according to the word patterns they have.  The students practice reading and sorting their words every day and on Fridays they glue them down and we check their progress.

We have also been working on writing personal narratives or small moments about our lives.  We learned how to add transition words to put our story in order and make it more interesting.

We have some hard workers in this class!