Tuesday, August 19th

We had a productive day today.  During ELA we completed our daily grammar and I gave the first of my narrative writing lessons.  This term's Unit of Inquiry is "How We Organize Ourselves" and my lessons help students use various processes to make their writing logical, entertaining, and vivid.  Additionally, the organizational methods they will learn this year will help make writing less stressful.  

Today I modeled how students can use questions to create story leads.  I told them a three sentence story and allowed the students to ask me questions.  Then I selected a few questions that "spoke to me" and wrote detailed responses.  I told the students that we can write parts of a story in whatever order we are inspired to write them.  Organizing and ordering can come later in the revision and editing phases.  Students then worked with a partner to get questions for their own short stories and we concluded with a 10 minute free-write time. 

We read a few pages in The Giver and during social studies students learned about the amendment change process.  Before taking notes, students talked about why the Founder's made the process difficult and how the process helps create order in our country.  As a reminder, the Bill of Rights and amendment change process assessment is this Friday.  For the rest of the week, students are allowed to take home their social studies notebooks each night so they can study.  

Reading Update
I checked the agendas of both classes and only a handful of students in each homeroom had parent initials for Monday night.  For the record, I check the agendas to verify that students are reading but students won't be penalized on their report cards for not having parent initials.  Fluency and comprehension both increase when a student reads for at least 30 minutes a day so please encourage your child to meet the reading requirement and sign his/her agenda each night (Monday-Friday) if you can remember.  

Parent Involvement
I know we all have busy schedules but I wanted to invite parents to the classroom.  There are a variety of things parents can do, including, but not limited to:

• read with the class and participate in our group discussions
• help with writing feedback during editing/revision times (will happen during the week of September 2nd)
• lead a content-related lesson (send me an email if you have any ideas)
• work with and/or monitor small groups during project work times (typically during the last two weeks of each term)
• sit in on a lesson
• eat lunch
• play at recess

Please feel free to email me if you want to participate in a class activity or if you just want to sit in on a lesson, parents are more than welcome to stop by.