Here's a short video tutorial on mentor sentences.
Today was a great day! We played a bit of Would You Rather to get to know one another and then we listened while Dr. Rowe a short story called "First Day Fly." This week, we'll be looking at two short pieces (First Day Fly & Coat of Many Colors) and analyzing the texts for characterization and how the author write about the characters and what that reveals to us as readers. We also talked about character's VOICE and how sometimes characters don't use correct grammar because this is more informal writing.
Today we review our HW and made sure we had the elements necessary to earn the highest marks on the HW. We also discussed the HW lottery. We'll spend this week working on First Day Fly & Coat of Many Colors. When we return from Labor Day, please have Restart by Gordon Korman in class and ready to read!
Today we started reading Restart and met our protagonist, Chase Ambrose. When we meet Chase, he has just had a traumatic fall off his roof and has a brain injury. This is the first week we have had a "full" homework packet. I have gone over each page with the students, but there will probably be a lot of questions. Try your best and we will all improve as we continue throughout the year. Do watch the mentor sentences video posted on this page to help with that activity.
This week, we discussed what was happening to Chase in our book so far. We also discussed characterization and change. We spent a large portion of the time reviewing and working on the grammar for the mentor sentence. For this week, please read 8-14 and work on your Week Two Packet!
Today we worked on identifying syllable types and reviewing our mentor sentence reference page. We also discussed Restart and the changes we are seeing in Chase. Once we return from break, we'll be reading the book Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science.
Today we finished up our study of Restart and a lot of people had a lot of opinions about whether they believed Chase had really changed or not. I'm excited to read our next book: Phineas Gage: A Gruesome, But True Story about Brain Science when we return from break. It will be fun to see the neurology connections between Restart and Phineas.
Today we started a new book. Several students did not have this new book and there is required reading in it for the week, so please get that as soon as possible. I sent multiple emails about it. For this unit, we'll also be looking at nonfiction text features, outline, and annotation. We'll also be discussing how we read informative texts differently from fictional texts. Very proud of how well everyone did on the mentor sentence today in class!
Today we discussed Phineas and what we found truly the most impressive fact we learned about him. We also spent some time working in groups on completing our annotating. Last week, I walked them through this process with me guiding the instruction. This week, we worked in groups. The goal is to remove the amount of support slowly, so that students are able to complete the content independently (and well.). We also spent some time learning about idioms and what idoms are, so that we can create a really fun idiom costumes next week. We also diagramed our mentor sentence for the week.
Today we practiced some of the skills I have been noticing that students are struggling with when they complete the homework for the week. One thing to notes---When they complete the outline, they should use that to do their writing, so all items in the outline should appear in their writing. We also worked on mentor sentences. When students are getting to day 3 & 4, they should be inserting their own words into the mentor sentence not the words from the mentor sentence itself. They just need to make sure that the words are the same part of speech as the mentor sentence.
Today we worked on writing a narrative story in a group (just to take a little break from so much nonfiction). We will finish up Phineas this week!
Today we read Gift of the Magi in Class and worked together to develop a theme for some major topics of the short story.
Today we continued to work on narrative structure by writing a collaborative microfiction (only 10 sentences!). We also reviewed a few grammar concepts in there as well! For HW, complete the second portion of the Gift of the Magi.
Today we started our second short story for the season, which is The Little Match Girl. We are covering literacy topics of tone, mood, and figurative language.