17 Again …
We started our day with independent reading/journal work. Then, because it is Friday we moved on to Readers’ Theatre. Today we did a script based on the new movie - 17 Again. We had a chance to read through 3 times. And, because we get better with practice we were especially good today … especially that scene where Ned meets his best friend Mike who has amazingly turned back into a 17 year old!! Great work. It was fun. You all have plans for the weekend so enjoy. See you Monday. 
Baby chameleons … how cute!!
Who would have thought … an hour delay!! I threw out my hour delay schedule at the end of March!! You just never know.
We are continuing to work on our stratgey of “determining importance.” Together we reviewed/worked through the second chapter of our book on animals. We decided on the most important information (main idea) and what interesting facts supported this. I hope you have a better idea of how this process works.
We ended our class (shortened by the delay) by reviewing straegies to figure out words we don’t know. You had great ideas and were able to decode all the words on our list. Remembering to look for prefixes & suffixes is a good help. Also, breaking words into parts is an excellent strategy.
Reader’s Theatre tomorrow.
Now … that’s a beard!
The man behind the beard … Charles Darwin. We continued reading in the book Amazing Animals. Today we did Chapter 2 and I asked you to read each section and pick out the main idea. Then you had to find interesting/supporting details. All this helps us to work on the strategy “Determining Importance.” For example, we found out how Darwin did some important work studying animal adaptations. Tomorrow we’ll do Chapter 3.
We also did a bit of vocabulary work – finding the meaning from context in the sentence. Great work there.
Today we took a good chunk of time at the beginning of class for your independent/shared reading. Everyone was into their books … great. You should also have completed a journal entry.
The latter part of class was taken up with our vocabulary lesson. Today we looked at word beginnings AND endings. Good work again.
Dont read much … think again!!
It really is amazing how much information is all around us. Today we did an introduction to our next strategy and we had to come up with all the things we read in a typical day. I think those of you who say you don’t read were surprised. Great lists. You thought of things I didn’t (ie. makes/models of cars, t-shirt slogans …) How about bumper stickers!! We are surrounded by text - more than ever before. We are going to be looking at how to decide what is important in the text we read. This skill will help us in many ways.
You had a good independent reading period today and did a journal as well. We also corrected the quotation activity you completed yesterday.
Dangers of texting …
Welcome back after a long weekend. Hope you all had a great one. Not may weeks left now.
We started our class today with an article about texting – something many of you do. All of you know more about it than me … I still don’t even own a cell phone!! We did a read aloud/think aloud putting a focus on getting the main idea of the article. We all agreed the main idea of this article was to make us aware of times when texting is inappropriate & dangerous. We should be responsible when sending text messages. We will be working on this strategy next – determining what is important in what we read. Good job today.
We reread Night At The Museum as we only had a “once through” on Friday. Then you had an exercise to do that involved using quotations – locating the words directly spoken in each sentence. We’ll check that tomorrow.
Friday … a long weekend ahead!
Today I had you begin with your independent reading books and do your weekly journal. Keep recording your pages read.
Next we did a read aloud/think aloud with a book called Qu’appelle by Canadian writer David Bouchard. I asked you to use our strategies as we read. Good work. The art work was beautiful in this book so we didn’t have to work hard on the visual.
Readers Theatre! We did a selection from Scope Magazine called “Night At the Museum” based on the movie. Good job. It was a bit longer so we only had one read through. Maybe we’ll try it again next week.
Hope you all have a great holiday weekend.
Running shoes, sneakers …
We returned to PISA today. Earlier in the week we did a fiction selection. Today we looked at a non fiction selection – a piece about running shoes. We read it together and you worked through the comprehension questions on your own. Good work. I was glad to see you using subheadings and italicized text as clues to the information you were looking for.
The rest of our day was spent on our weekly vocabulary lesson. I am anxious to see how your spelling test went. See you tomorrow!
Panther …
Today we decided to take a look at the recent PISA test that was given to all 15 year olds in our school … just to see what we missed! I selected a short story called “The Gift” and we read it together. (Thanks for the help!!) We then read, discussed and answered the test questions that were given. This was a great exercise because it allowed us to use all the strategies we have been learning – making connections, visualizing, asking questions and making inferences. Great work. I was especially impressed with your ability to find evidence in the story to back up your answers.
We finished the day with our independent reading. Remember I am out tomorrow but will see you all Thursday. Be good.
The cows are lying down … is it going to rain???
Boy … it seemed like veryone was very tired this morning. Some of you had busy weekends – travelling, going out to eat etc. Get some rest tonight and catch up on sleep!
We started the morning with a think aloud – an opinion piece from the Guardian. We made some inferences as we read. We got the “gist” of what the writer wanted us to know. Good work.
We looked at a couple of weather cartoons to keep practicing our inferencing skills. Once again, I think we “got it.” We were able to make the inferences the cartoonists wanted us to make. Then you continued to work on your weather assignment. Most are finished so that is great. I would like you all to have the quiz finished tomorrow.
Note my picture today. One of the assignment questions asked you to think of sayings about or signs of weather. That shoud be pretty easy for Islanders. A couple of you mentioned the one where it is thought that if the cows are lying down in a field … it is soon going to rain. Not sure how scientific it is but lots of people believe it.
