The last day!

Prepositions

Remember Prepositions? That song, you learned in Writer's Workshop? Yea, you still need to know Prepositions for Language Arts too!

Prepositions

(To the tune of Yankee Doodle)

about above across after

along among around at

before beside between against

within without beneath

through

during under in into

over on off to toward

upon near for from except

by with behind below down

Text Codes

Immigration Unit

Find the documents you need for your particular book on the blog by looking at the top menu and selecting the name of your book.

Homophone Review

Fourth Quarter!

Welcome back!

Our first week back has been busy! We are beginning Unit 5 in our Vocabulary Workshop workbook. In addition, we are touching on a Black History Month Project that was pushed back a few weeks due to additional snow days and a few extra days to complete our Tuck Everlasting unit project.

 We discussed bias, prejudice, and perspective in class and students were assigned an African-American Inventor to research. We will spend two days in the library researching our inventor and then will write a few reflections in a journal format reflecting on what we've learned. The goal of this project is for students to experience the difference in material available on individuals who lived many years ago and reflect on how bias, prejudice, and perspective of people during that time period may have impacted the amount of information we have on these inventors in addition to the scarcity of written records and technology during the time.

We will be finishing up this activity next week!

Run-On Review

Please review how to correct run-on sentences by re-viewing Ms. Shahani's video. It is posted on her blog but I attached a link below!

Ms. Shahani's Run-On Video

The final days of February

This week we have been nearing the end of Tuck Everlasting in class. In furthering our discussion on characterization and inferencing, we have been working on our compare and contrast paragraphs in which we compared and contrasted two characters from Tuck Everlasting. Next week, we will quiz over Ch. 9-16 vocabulary, characterization, and the metaphor "A Ferris Wheel is a wheeling calendar" which we discussed thoroughly in class as well as created a visual representation of the comparison. Next week we will also be finishing Tuck Everlasting and talking about larger themes present throughout the novel as well as our final culminating project over the novel. After finishing our Tuck Everlasting unit, we will spend some time celebrating and remembering Black History Month.

To help you study for your upcoming quiz

Click here to visit Quizlet Ch. 1-8 vocabulary

Ch. 1-8 Review
Ch. 1-4 Review
Vocabulary Crossword and Key

Shortened Week- MLK

This week, we continued our study of Tuck Everlasting. For most of us, we began looking at the author's use of foreshadowing to provide us with insights into where our story is going and what might happen next. We continued our study of vocabulary words in the context of TE and introduced Metaphors. We will later identify metaphors in Tuck Everlasting, but for this shortened week we talked about what metaphors are, why they are used, and how they are similar and different to similes. I attached a link below to a video we watched that is a fun way of seeing how similes and metaphors and similar, yet different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoSBVNUO2LU

Example of Foreshadowing-- our "fun" discussion

Within our discussion of foreshadowing in literature, we also discussed foreshadowing within movies. We discussed how music can foreshadow events about to happen in a movie or the personality of a character (Cinderella's evil stepmother for instance). Pixar is also known for including foreshadowing within their movies that hint what might be released in the future. Below is a picture I showed the students.

Monsters Inc. was released two years before Finding Nemo however Pixar places Nemo in the movie to foreshadow the future Finding Nemo movie release. The students did a great job discussing other hints they've seen within Disney/Pixar movies--- Wall-E in garage in Cars, the car in Toy Story being the same car in Cars, Woody and Buzz laying in a landfill in A Bug's Life, the setting of Frozen being mentioned as a nice vacation spot in Tangled… the list goes on!

January 14-17

     This week we really had a chance to dive into Tuck Everlasting that was introduced last week. With a shortened class period on Monday, we reviewed "Prologue" and the purposes an author has for writing a prologue. Then we worked on illustrating a specific passage from the prologue to help us visualize different events Natalie Babbit introduces to us in the prologue as "three things [that] happened and at first there appeared to be no connection between them" (pg. 3). Visualization is a key concept throughout our discussions because it is one the many reasons why an author utilizes different literary techniques and figurative language in his/her writing. We will refer to our illustrations frequently as we uncover the apparent connection between these events. Below is a picture of the example illustrations I had a chance to hang.

      After moving on, our classes have taken a more organized approach to the novel. We start each class period with a journal question per usual and take a few moments to discuss various responses to the journal entry. Then, students are introduced to the lesson topic for the day. This week we've focused on the different literary terms personification, simile, foreshadowing, and introduced metaphor (in two class sections). We've written down the meaning of these words as well as a general example. After introducing personification, we together read Ch. 1 and 2 and our purpose for reading was to identify examples of personification within the chapters. After reading, we together identified numerous examples of personification by highlighting and labeling them as such. We ended the class by discussing the plot events that unfolded through the two chapters. Similarly, simile and foreshadowing were introduced, discussed, and identified through our reading as we continued through Chapter 4 of Tuck Everlasting. 

Next week we will review metaphors diving into a discussion on the metaphors within Tuck Everlasting. I also hope to introduce symbolism to the students as we continue reading up to Chapter 8 in the novel. 

2014 Begins!

We are back and starting the second half of 5th grade! I am excited about the quarter ahead and have great expectations for what is to come. We began the quarter with two snow days and a short week, but we managed to fit a lot into two class periods this week. We began by discussing what a "resolution" is as we hear this word frequently at the start of a new year. Each student made a resolution related to school that they could work on throughout the remainder of the school year. We then refreshed our writing and reading memory by writing an organized paragraph answering the question "What if you could live forever?" and discussed what is "setting" and "genre" to get us thinking about topics our upcoming novel, Tuck Everlasting, presents. We learned about the word PROLOGUE and continuing our discussion on Author's Purpose, we listed five different purposes an author might have for including a prologue in his or her book. We read the Prologue to Tuck Everlasting and briefly discussed it. We are working on annotating and thinking as we read for a purpose so you may see their books marked up with ink!

Next week we will start the week off with taking Natalie Babbitt's words in the Prologue and applying them to a visual representation. The students will be assigned small parts of the Prologue in which to illustrate so that we can visualize the prologue and set the stage for the beginning of the novel. We will refer back to these pictures when we reach the Epilogue at the end of Tuck Everlasting. Afterwards, we will read and discuss the next few chapters as well as develop their vocabulary. We will be introducing various literary terms such as similes, metaphors, personification, symbolism, foreshadowing, etc. as we read and analyze the text. The students will be challenged to inference and analyze beyond basic comprehension.

Look what we know about verbs!

Created with Padlet

A Break is Almost Here!

Last week we began an in class project that will continue through the rest of the quarter. Students are researching either an alternative energy source, electric or hybrid car, or different types of waste and recycling.

We began the research process and students will be finishing up their research when we return from Thanksgiving Break. From this research they will be writing an informative paragraph in Language Arts class followed by a persuasive paragraph in Writer's Workshop. They will be publishing their work and creating a short Public Service Announcement.

This week we will be completing the Unit 4 Vocabulary and Spelling Quiz. Also, the students had their first assignment from their Newbery Award Project due; a bookmark displaying the title, author, and important object from the book. I have been laminating the bookmarks that have already been turned in and am impressed!

As we conclude school before Thanksgiving break, I have been making my rounds with students to discuss their topic, gauging their knowledge of their topic without their notes vs. with their research notes. I have also been discussing with them the benefits and drawbacks of their topic and have played devil's advocate in our conversations to see if they are able to defend what they are saying. While meeting with them one-on-one I've also been going through their notebook and discussing the comments I have made to them through the grading cycles. I've also mentioned any missing assignments I have from them as there are many and lots of no names piling up.

After Thanksgiving the students will continue working on their Recycling and Energy project. There should be little homework from this project unless the students do not use their class time wisely. In that case, they may have a few things to finish up in order to be at a certain starting point the following class period. We will begin Unit 5 in our Vocabulary Workshop and the students should continue to work on their Newbery Award book outside of class.

The Week of 11/11-11/15

This week we began the last chapter in our first Vocabulary Unit. We also utilized an IPad App to write creative stories. The students were able to click on different areas of the IPad that gave them a character, object, situation, and setting. The students then had to write their own story based on the items. 

In reading, we discussed Making Predictions. As a class we read a story about an ancient Egyptian mystery, entitled The Curse of the Mummy's Daddy. We stopped along the way to make predictions and then discussed why good readers make predictions. At the end we assessed whether or not our predictions were right, and what clues in the story could have helped us make a correct prediction. Then, students read another story on their own and make predictions about the story. We read the ending of the story the next day in class to see if our predictions were correct. 

We ended our unit on Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives by reviewing this week and taking the test.

Next week, we will begin a unit on Alternative Energy and Recycling. Students will be assigned a topic and we will complete research in class on our topics. We will be working towards creating a Public Service Announcement informing others about our topic and either persuading them that it is a better option, or persuading them that it is important to be educated on the topic in order to help sustain our future generations. This will be a mostly in class project and if the students use their class time wisely then they should not have any additional work to do at home. It will run the remainder of the quarter with their Newbery Project being their main homework priority. 

I am constantly reminded how wonderful my students are both inside and outside of class. They are driven and dedicated. They have kind hearts, curious minds, and positive attitudes. After attending the Strings Concert last night I was reminded even more that my students have so many other things going on in their lives and as young as they are, are doing a great job at managing it all. 

Grammar Test this Week

To study, look over the notes on Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives. Make sure you know the difference between the different types of nouns, verbs, and adjectives so that you can identify the meaning and type on the test. There are many resources on Moodle with practice and answer keys. There will be 10 matching, two response questions, one short answer, and several sentences where you will be asked to identify nouns, verbs, or adjectives and the type. 

The last week of October 10/28-11/1

This week we focused on verbs. After discussing the different types of verbs, we discussed the importance of using "vivid verbs" in our writing (vivid is also a vocabulary word from this week!). Students were asked to write about their trip to the Henry Ford Museum using vivid verbs.

In addition, we also practiced identifying verbs in a fun way using a few different interactive activities on the SmartBoard. On Halloween, we took a break from focusing on just verbs and instead practiced all different parts of speech by completing Halloween Mad Lib stories with partners. At the end of class we shared our favorite Mad Libs with the class. They were very funny!

Finally, we took a visit to the library to choose our Newbery Award books for our Quarter 2 Book Talk. We did a "speed dating" of sorts with the different book options before choosing a book. The students have one week to change their book if they find they are not interested in the book they initially chose.

Next week we will move into Adjectives, complete Vocab Unit 3 Quiz, and practice some creative writing!

Short week- Oct. 15-18

Although it was a short week, we jumped right into the second quarter! This week I asked the students to combine three skills we had worked on into one cohesive writing. We combined identifying the parts of plot, summarizing, and making personal connections into one writing sample where we could identify the parts of the story, summarize a story, and then make a personal connection to the characters.

Following this, we began our grammar unit with nouns. We are working to identify common or proper nouns and abstract or concrete nouns. We worked on choosing more precise nouns than "thing" to improve our writing. We then moved into plural nouns and the rules for plural endings with the hope that the more familiar we become with noun endings, the more we can consciously improve our spelling.

In addition we also began our next Vocab unit. Next week we are looking to finish up our noun lessons, and begin talking about our next independent reading project before leaving for The Henry Ford Museum!

The Last Week of Quarter 1!

I can't believe it is already the final day of the first quarter! Believe it or not we are a fourth of the way through 5th grade! I was so impressed with the book talks presented this week. Every night I left school wishing I had more time to read because the students introduced their classmates to some really exciting books. By a show of hands after the last presentation, students pretty unanimously agreed that:
- they enjoyed listening to others present their books
- they enjoyed the assignment
- they would be willing to do another book talk
- there were presentations on books they had never heard of before
- there were books presented that they are now interested in reading
- they felt they had enough time to prepare for the presentation (even though some of them opted to wait until the last minute, they felt I assigned it with enough time)
- they still like Language Arts!

My goal for the assignment was that students demonstrate their understanding of the plot of a book, author's purpose, and to organize this information in a way that is relatable to an audience. In addition, there are many avid readers and this was a great way for students to share books they enjoyed with other students so that others could gain ideas for new books to read. While I try my best to make recommendations for students when they come to me looking for book ideas, other students are great resources too!

In addition to the book talk presentations, we finished off the year with our Unit 2 Vocabulary Quiz and practicing finding the main idea in nonfiction and summarizing a fictional story.

For your information, here is a brief preview of what we have coming up in the second quarter!
- Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives
- Vocabulary
-- Newberry Award Book Talk

- Predicting
- Visualizing
- Making Connections in our Summaries

- Recycling Project