Narrative Endings- The Play and Intonation!

We have been working hard on our narratives! The end is in sight and so we are working on how to end them. We don't want just any ending! We want an ending that will match our story. If the story is sad, we should have a sad ending, if the story is funny, we should have a funny ending, etc. Here is a chart that can help us choose an ending that will fit our narrative:

Next on the agenda- THE PLAY! We have been practicing for the play quite a bit for it to be perfect for all our friends and family that come to see it on June 3rd @ 6PM. Please make sure that you are practicing your lines (and maybe even memorizing them!) with INTONATION! Intonation is the rise and fall of voice pitch according to what you are reading. If you are reading a question, your pitch would go up at the end of the sentence. If you are reading a sentence with an exclamation point at the end, use excitement in your voice! Practice, practice, practice! June 3rd will be here before you know it! :) It's going to be be great!

New Reading Homework Format

We will be having a new reading homework format for the rest of the school year. Your child will be reading every night for 20 minutes, logging in the title, author, time they read, number of pages read and having their guardian sign this.

Reading nightly is so important! Please read the following to truly understand it's importance:

Did you know one of the most prominent indicators of a successful reader is the amount of time spent actually reading? Let's figure it out -- mathematically!

Student A reads 20 minutes five nights of every week
Student B reads only 4 minutes a night...or not at all!

Step 1: Multiply minutes a night x 5 times each week.
Student A reads 20 min. x 5 times a week = 100 mins./week
Student B reads 4 minutes x 5 times a week = 20 minutes

Step 2: Multiply minutes a week x 4 weeks each month.
Student A reads 400 minutes a month.
Student B reads 80 minutes a month.

Step 3: Multiply minutes a month x 9 months/school year
Student A reads 3600 min. in a school year.
Student B reads 720 min. in a school year.

Student A practices reading the equivalent of ten whole school days a year.
Student B gets the equivalent of only two school days of reading practice.

By the end of 6th grade if Student A and Student B maintain these same reading habits, Student A will have read the equivalent of 60 whole school days.Student B will have read the equivalent of only 12 school days.

One would expect the gap of information retained will have widened considerably and so, undoubtedly, will school performance. How do you think Student B will feel about him/herself as a student?

Some questions to ponder:
Which student would you expect to read better?
Which student would you expect to know more?
Which student would you expect to write better?
Which student would you expect to have a better vocabulary?
Which student would you expect to be more successful in school....and in life?

Writing with Emotion

In class right now, we are getting started with writing narratives again! We are so excited about this! We are learning many different ways to generate narratives. So far we have come up with:

• Think of a person, place or thing that matters to you, then list clear, small moments you remember. Choose one to sketch and then write a story about that moment.
• Think of the first or last time you did something and write about it.
• Think of a mentor author that you admire and write a story that theirs reminds you of.
• Think of a family story.
• Think of an emotion and write about a time when you felt that emotion.

We came up with some emotions and listed times when we felt them. Here is what we came up with on our first day:

The next day, we chose four emotions and told stories "out in the air" to our friends and then wrote the story in our charts in our writing journals.

Finally, we can start writing our emotion story! We chose our favorite one from our chart above and started writing! We know that a story has a beginning, middle and end, but we haven't gotten to the end yet! We wrote with descriptive detail, so the story is taking time to write out!

Show someone at your house your emotion story and see what they think about it! Did they give you any constructive criticism? Leave a comment and let us know what they thought!

Making Predictions

We read the book Big Bad Bruce today by Bill Peet. We only read the first 6 pages and then closed the book. Then we started listing what we knew about Bruce, the bear, so far. We then used what we knew about the character to make predictions about what may happen in the story. Here is what we came up with: After making our t-chart, we finished the rest of the book. None of our predictions happened, but we still thought they were strong predictions because they were based on what we knew so far.

Our imagination can take us anywhere, and usually this is a good thing. However, when you are trying to predict what will happen in a story it is good to go with what you know so far and not let your imagination run wild! This way, your prediction will be closer to what actually happens. There was no way we could have predicted what happened in Big Bad Bruce! Let your parents know about Bill Peet's story and talk about the theme we discussed as well. :)

Arts Extravaganza!!

Wow! What a week it has been with Arts Extravaganza! Arts Extravaganza is a week when everyone at Chets Creek celebrates the arts. We decorate the walls of Chets with paintings and sculptures and are introduced to a new form of art everyday at a fun assembly!

On Monday, we watched "Sugar and Spice" which was a puppetry show. It was so funny and so neat how he made those puppets talk without moving his mouth!

On Tuesday, we listened to the Symphony Esemble while they played and taught us about many different kinds of instruments.

On Wednesday, we listened to the poet and storyteller, Glenis Redman. She was hilarious! Click here to go to her website!

Today, we watched Orisirisi, which is an African American dance and music team. They were AMAZING!

The fun doesn't stop today either! Tomorrow we will be enjoying the sounds of The Listening Project, which is a bluegrass band.

Then comes the fun stuff! Friday night from 6:00- 8:00 PM, Arts Extravaganza will be held here at Chets Creek! This is a fun-filled night of roaming the halls to look at all of our beautiful artwork, making our own FREE art crafts and more! Come and join the fun and leave a comment about what you do this Friday at Arts Extravaganza!

Character Traits

We have been learning a lot in Bill Peet's fun books! We have come up with themes for all the books. All the themes teach us a lesson about life. This week, we have been looking at the individual characters and noticing that the actions and choices that they make in the story make us think certain things of them; these are called their character traits.

The book that we are using to discuss character traits is Hubert's Hair-Raising Adventure. The students picked out a character of their choice from the book and wrote 5 character traits that they saw in the character. Then, they wrote whether it is a strength or weakness for that character and mentioned a piece from the text that prove that this character had this trait. Here is the form they filled out:

Be looking for this form to come home filled out as a Standard Snapshot in the near future! If you would like to try this again with another book, download this form here and turn it in to class for success tickets!

Summarizing

Today we learned another strategy for summarizing books that we read. We know that when we summarize, we aren't retelling all the details from the story, we are just giving the "gist" of what happened. One strategy that we learned earlier in the year was the "Someone Wants But So" strategy. Today in class we learned that, by answering the 6 questions, Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How, this will help you summarize a story. Here is a picture of our summary of Chester the Worldly Pig.

Also, we are learning new vocabulary words this week: edit, revise and revision. Since it is only Tuesday, we have only learned edit (to correct punctuation, spelling, grammar) and revise (to make more clear, to make better). Try and go into your orange Language Folder every night and review your words, we will have a quiz this Friday! :)

Leave a comment and tell us a summary of a book you've read using either "Someone, Wants, But, So" or the 6 questions!

Have a Great Spring Break!

We are so excited for Spring Break! We know that this is going to be a great break for you and you will all be ready to get back to school on April 12th! Just in case you get bored over Spring Break, here are some things that you can do:

* Show your parents Pamela Duncan Edwards reading our April book of the month, Princess Pigtoria and the Pea. Click here to watch!

* Show your parents pictures from our assembly with the author and illustrator, here.

* You can play on the website "Destination Success" or "FCAT Explorer" listed on the right of our blog. Remember- just because the FCAT is over doesn't mean that learning is over!

**But most of all, remember to have fun, rest and relax (maybe with a good book :)!**

Henry Cole and Pamela Duncan Edwards!

We are so excited that on Monday, the author and illustrator, Henry Cole and author Pamela Duncan Edwards will be visiting us here at Chets Creek! We have been reading all kinds of books by these authors and illustrators this week.

Be sure to bring in any books that you have by these two to get them signed on Monday! There are also books for sale here at school.

If you would like to learn more about these two wonderful authors, visit their websites this weekend!

Henry Cole

Pamela Duncan Edwards

Language & Reports

This week in language we will be having a quiz on analogies, possessives and editing. Remember that we will definitely have a question with editing where you will have to figure out where to put the punctuation!

For example: the girls had a great time this past friday on march 30 2010 they will have even more fun at hayleys party

You will have to capitalize, punctuate, add commas and find out where the pause is to make this statement two sentences.

On another note- reports should be finished TODAY! :) (This information was also in our Carribbean Connection and written our planners.)We have been working so hard on our reports and soon we will be sharing our reports with a wonderful publishing party! Hopefully Mrs. Constande won't get too carried away with the microphone again.... hehehe :)

Vocabulary & Bill Peet

We have been learning all kinds of new words with our read alouds everyday. We have also been learning new words to help us be better test takers and readers. Two of the words that we are learning this week are synonyms. They are brief and abbreviate. Both of these words mean to shorten in length. Try and use them in sentences this week in your conversations!

Also, this week we have been introduced to the author, Bill Peet. So far we have read Jennifer and Josephine. We loved it and can't wait to learn more about Bill Peet and read more of his books! To learn more about Bill Peet, click here. We briefly looked at the website, I know you can't wait to look at more of his work!

Let us know what you think about Bill Peet's website and all his work!

Rest & Relaxation

The "Fkitty" (prrrrrr) is coming next week. Here is our schedule:

Tuesday, March 9th- Reading session 1

Wednesday, March 10th- Reading session 2

Thursday, March 11th- Math sessions 1 & 2

We have all been preparing for this all year and YOU ARE READY! Please get plenty of rest this weekend and next week! Eat a healthy breakfast every morning next week and we know that you are all going to do great!

Main Idea & Details

The main idea of a passage is very important to think about after you have read the entire passage. Remember- the main idea is the big idea of the ENTIRE passage. Details are all the little things that add up to make the main idea! Have fun practicing the main idea and detail of passages on the following links:
Main Idea 1, Main Idea 2, Main Idea 3, Main Idea 4, Main Idea 5, Main Idea 6, Main Idea 7, Main Idea 8, Main Idea 9, Main Idea 10, Main Idea 11, Main Idea 12, Main Idea 13, Main Idea 14, Details 1, Details 2

Author's Purpose

Author's Purpose is a difficult concept to understand sometimes. We all know that a story entertains, a report, article, and fable inform or teach, and an advertisement is to persuade. But, sometimes we get confused. The only thing that will help us get better is practice! Practice makes perfect...so, here are some internet sites to help you practice deciding the author's purpose, or the author's reason for writing their piece.
Author's Purpose 1, Author's Purpose 2, Author's Purpose 3, Author's Purpose 4, Author's Purpose 5, More Author's Purpose links! Write us a comment and let us know which link you liked best!