Friday, October 23/09

Maybe try an “o” …

Friday again. Warm cinnamon rolls to start the day. We then got your brains warmed up with an exercise called an analogy. It had a Halloween theme. Some of you were very quick to figure out how this works … you have to figure out how two words are related by using an example. 3 of you were able to do you 3 minute reading assessment with Barb – thanks. The rest of the class we had some fun playing Halloween Hangman. This is actually a great word game and we can learn a lot about spelling etc. besides having fun.

Have a super weekend.

Thursday, October 22/09

Trick or treat????

Today we started on a new theme … Halloween. Makes sense being as we will all have it on our minds over the next week or so. We read about how Halloween started (All Hallow’s Eve), found out why people dressed in costume (to distract real ghosts) and waht the first jack o’ lanterns were – turnips! Then I had you do a brainstorm map on the theme. Some of you filled your page. Sounds like you have lots of knowledge about this topic. Should be fun!!

Wednesday, October 21/09

Believe it or not …

Probably not! Today we looked at a copy of a “newspaper” called a tabloid. It mostly  reports on celebrity gossip but often has feature stories on bizarre situations. (ie a the capture of a bat child … really!!!) Tabloids can a source for spreading urban legends. We read a short article on how to spot these “stories” and we now know they can spread fast with the help of internet/email.  Hopefully we will be wiser readers in the future; just beacuse someone wrote it down doesn’t always make it true.

Tuesday, October 20/09

Can you trust your passengers?

That is the question we should ask ourselves before picking up any hitchhiker. The story we read today, “The Two Hitchhikers,” involved a man picking up two passengers: the first for company, the second for security. Ironically, it was the second passenger who proved a threat. And the first guy saved the day! I took in your assignments at the end of class. We also looked at the old folksong “Bringing Mary Home.” It is really another version of the Vanishing Hitchhiker legend. You did a good job finding things the same and different when we compared it to our story.

Monday, October 19/09

The Vanishing Hitchhiker …

Welcome back … hope everyone had a great long weekend. I brought some new books for you to have a look at … hopefully you found something interesting.  We returned to the topic of “Urban Legends” today and worked with the story of the “Vanishing Hitchhiker.” We had a good discussion BEFORE READING. You had lots of knowledge on the subject. Interesting that some of you had heard similar versions. You were able to make lots of connections DURING READING. We’ll continue with this tomorrow.

Wednesday, October 14/09

Snowball the cat  … fact or fiction???

Well … it turns out fiction. But it had some of you fooled for awhile. Today we talked more about legends/urban legends. You came up with a great list of examples. It was really great to get local ones too. You then took a test: fact or fiction. You had to read through a number of supposed “true but hard to believe stories” and decide if they were true or legend. Good job – good discussion on these. We then went through the answers. Some fooled us & others didn’t.  You are heading into a four day weekend. Enjoy!!

Tuesday, October 13/09

Urban legends … to believe or not to believe!

Hopefully everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. A short week for us – two days. Today we went to the library to finish our song assignment. Thanks to all who worked hard to complete. The rest of you were able to get a headstart on our new theme … Urban Legends. I asked you to list any legends you know already and then to go online to discover what an urban legend is. more on that tomorrow.

Friday, October 9/09

There are more ways to tell a story than just with  words. When we think of “reading” we mostly think of words. However, we can also read images; we do it all the time. Today I asked you to select a favorite song and then to select images that would explain what the lyrics mean.  This is just another way to show that you understand what you are reading.

Have a great long weekend … Happy Thanksgiving!

October 8/09

Mourning the loss of a fellow RCMP officer …

A very rainy day. You found some new, interesting books  during Reading Period this morning … good. There are  books  for everyone to enjoy – we just have to find them. Then we worked on an article from our CRIME anthology. BEFORE READING  we scanned the article & we shared knowledge of RCMP we know and talked about why would a person become a police officer. We read the article together, making connections  DURING READING. AFTER READING we checked our understanding of the facts and talked about the crime of killing police officers. Is it worse than killing others? You wrote your thoughts.

Enjoy your turkey dinner today … tomorrow is Friday!

Wednesday, October 7/09

Today we continued our research on a famous prison. You were looking for certain information to explain what these prisons were like as well as a couple of pictures.