Writing Right

Today we started off with a Drama exercise that involved talking about ourselves in the third person. Students pretended that they were someone else in their family (i.e. a parent, sibling, or other relative), and described themselves from that person's perspective. For example, I pretended to be my mom, and described myself in ways that she would describe me, using "he" instead of "I". This activity will also help students in writing narratives this year.

Unit 3 of the Grade 5 and 6 spelling programs was assigned today. We continued reading chapter 8 of Tuck Everlasting, but for a change today, students sketched Minute Mini Pics (tiny drawings done quickly in 60 seconds to illustrate what they had just read on that page). This strategy may help students having difficulty picturing in their heads, what they just read. By the end of the chapter, each student had 8 small snapshots of what had occured, at which point I asked them to write a brief description of each picture, in order to retell the story.

During our Writing Workshop time today, I introduced the Four-Square writing strategy. In the middle of the page, students write the topic of their sentence (e.g. My favourite food is spaghetti and meatballs). in three boxes around this topic, students write one reason in each box explaining why spaghetti and meatballs is their favourite food (e.g. Box 1: It is easy to cook, Box 2: It is fun to eat, Box 3: It is delicious). Under each of these 3 reasons, students write 3 more explanations for each:
e.g.
Box 1: It is easy to cook- a) roll meat into balls, b) put noodles into boiling water, c) pour store-bought sauce into pan.
Box 2: It is fun to eat- a) twirl it on a fork, b) slurp it, c) splatter sauce
Box 3: It is delicious- a) tomatoes, b) italian spices, c) filling meat
Once students have completed their notes in the first three boxes, they can write their topic sentence in the fourth box, followed by three supporting sentences to explain it, in order to make one detailed paragraph.
e.g.
My favourite food is spaghetti and meatballs because it is easy to cook, fun to eat, and tastes delicious. I find this meal easy to cook because you just have to roll the meat into balls, put the noodles into boiling water, and then pour the store-bought sauce into the pan. When I eat spaghetti and meatballs, I love to have fun twirrling it on my fork, slurping up the noodles, and splattering sauce everywhere. This meal is so delicious because I love the taste of tomatoes and italian spices, while the meatballs fill me up.

I hope to see some very detailed writing assignments handed-in, as my students get used to following this strategy.

During our Computer Lab time, we shifted our focus to Social Studies today, and students broke into groups, each group visiting a different Ontario political party's website, and researching information about their party leader, logo, number of candidates, priorities, platforms and campaign issues, for the coming October 10th election. This is our introduction to Canadian politics, with a focus on cerrent events. Students will take the information they found and use it to compare and contrast the different political parties in Ontario. More information about these parties can be found at http://www.elections.on.ca/
Grade 5 students will take this information as a starting point for their unit on Canadian Government, while Grade 6 students will move toward Canada's Connections to the World.

In Math, the Grade 5 students wrote their Patternign Unit Test, while the Grade 6 students wrote a quiz to assess how they are doing so far. Grade 6's should be finished their Patterning unit by the end of this week, with their Unit Test to follow.

Homework Assigned Monday September 24, 2007:
Grade 5
-Read 20 minutes, update log
-Spelling Unit 3 due Thursday
-Reading Response Journal entry due Monday
-Four Square writing sheet + 1 detailed paragraph due tomorrow
-Science: Sponge experiement due tomorrow

Grade 6
-Read 20 minutes, update log
-Spelling Unit 3 due Thursday
-Four Square writing sheet + 1 detailed paragraph due tomorrow
-Science: Paper Airplane experiement due tomorrow