Reading Homework
Our students should be reading 20 minutes every night Monday through Thursday as part of their reading homework. I ask that students stick with one book, reading it at home, then school until it is finished, before starting another book.
At some point during their 20 minutes of reading, student should record a "stop and jot". This year, I am trying to use a composition notebook to house their thoughts each night. I am hopeful this will be a better way to keep them organized and accountable for that part of their reading homework. This "stop and jot" could be a prediction, favorite part, a part they visualized, connection, question, new or interesting word choice. They will be given time at the beginning of each class to share their thoughts with their peers!
Interpreting Characters-The Heart of the Story
*Establishing a reading life; pay attention as a reader, find good fit books and books you want to read, summarize and synthesize text as you are reading, make movies in your mind as you read, set reading goals,
*Think deeply about characters; ask ourselves, "Why might the character act that way?", notice character motivations, notice when an author repeats something in the story, using character traits and precise language to describe characters, notice that characters are complicated and can be more than one trait, using evidence from the story to support your answer
*Building interpretations about books; think about other parts of the story like setting and plot, mood, feelings and how parts connect with each other, look for patterns and connections in stories, identifying themes or life lessons
*understanding prefixes and suffixes and using word parts to aid in understanding the meaning
Celebration- Students created self-portrait in books bookmarks
See blog soon for sample pictures
Unit 2 - Reading the Weather, Reading the World
*Learning from texts; making connections, noticing text features, notice text structures (chronological, problem/solution, cause/effect, compare/contrast), how to tackle hard parts of nonfiction reading, figuring out new vocabulary, writing summaries that include the main idea and supporting details
*Whole class research project; getting to know resources and team research roles, synthesizing information from multiple texts, connecting what you know to what you are learning, rereading when things are complex
*Second research project; comparing and contrasting two topics, noticing patterns and relationships between topics, asking questions, organize information learned for a purpose, evaluating resources, notice decisions nonfiction writers make and how they want us to think or feel about a topic, noticing author's craft
*antonyms and synonyms
*knows resource tools, dictionary, glossary and uses them to determine meanings
Poetry
- Understands how descriptive words and phrases in texts provide meaning
- Explains how poet or speaker can convey a feeling or emotion
- Reads in meaningful phrases, in this unit it was recognizing and reading line breaks
- Rereading to gain meaning and understanding
Breaking the ice-
To introduce this unit, students read a collection of Giggle Poetry! These poems were just for fun! We practiced noticing and reading line breaks, patterns of rhyme, and discussed what parts of the poem made us laugh.
Poems create images-
Students enjoyed reading and rereading another collection of poems where they noticed exact word choices that painted an image or picture in their mind. Students illustrated the images and compared them to others to notice similarities and differences the poems created for students.
Poems convey strong feelings or emotions-
Using the mentor text, Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, students enjoyed hearing the free verse poem written from Jack's point of view. Students focused on explicit word choices and used them to support feelings and emotions the speaker was experiencing.