We made it! Our class CRUSHED the literacy SAGE tests and for the last couple weeks of school, we are reading an awesome mystery book called The Westing Game in book clubs. First we learned a little about what mystery genre books are like and about the Stock Market (because Ms. Bad said it would be a part of the book, but we haven't gotten there yet I think...). Each book club member has certain jobs every day we read in class, including things like Question Master, Discussion Director, Visualizer, Word Watcher, Summarizer, and Connections Captain. We read certain chapters per day, then do a one of those jobs according to our group's schedule. We also have a character map that we write down clues and connections between characters to figure out who killed Sam Westing! It's been fun to find the clues and figure out what's going on in this crazy book!
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We, as Ms. Bad's literacy class, are very excited as the end of this very awesome year comes to an end! Since the last time I posted a blog, we have done many things but I think the most exciting was finishing ROTHMC (Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry). This book was about an African American family and the racial discrimination they went through in their daily lives. For some of us it was very sobering, and for others it really helped us learn. Some might also say that the end was a little bit sad because not all the problems were solved and we still had questions. All in all, every one enjoyed the book at one point. After we finished the book we got into groups and took a "test." To show our comprehension of the story and the plot events, in groups we created a plot diagram. That's like a map of the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Check out our final maps below! That’s all for now! Our ROTHMC Plot DiagramsHey parents and others! This month we are doing something really fun. We, as a class, are reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry! Right now we are in chapter five and we are already loving it. It is about an African American family that has to go through all of the struggle of the historical time period because of racism and discrimination. Every chapter we have had a different purpose for reading. In chapter one, we focused on building our vocabulary. In chapter two, we focused on looking at the characters types, character relationships, and character personalities. In chapter three we also focused on that but we also looked at how they where related and how they acted though all of this. Right now in four and five we are working on our inferencing powers! In those chapters we have to write at least one sticky note with an inference on it about the character personalities or the historical time. In chapter six, we analyzed the dialect used in the book. We learned that dialect is a version of a language that uses different idioms and slang. For chapters seven and eight, we learned about metacognition (thinking about our thinking) and we practiced using fix-it strategies, like rereading or asking questions about what we read, to monitor our comprehension. For chapters nine and ten, we anlayzed the subplots in the story and predicted how they would be resolved. There are lots of subplots in ROTHMC! For the last two chapters, our purpose for reading was for pleasure and enjoyment! Like Ms. Bad always says, you should always be reading a book just because you want to learn more. Well that is all for today! Thanks! Check out the photos below of our inference poster with all our inferences from chapter four and five and some of the examples of Southern dialect we found in chapter six! There's also some photos of our sticky notes that we used to monitor our comprehension and metcognition. Our class librarian, Eliza, and her group of helpers have been busy at work reorganizing our library! They organized the books by genre using colored stickers to show which genre they are. They are also continuing to add stickers inside the book cover that list their Lexile level so we can know which books we should read. Check it out! Ms. Bad asked me to tell you about what awesome stuff we have been doing to prepare for our next novel. Well, first, we did some research on the history of the time period of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. You might already know but it takes place int he 1930s when there was segregation, which means African Americans were had to be in separate public place and they were being treated badly and very unfairly. We researched on three things: The Civil Rights Movement, the life of the African Americans in the 1930s, and finally, the Great Depression. After we did some searching for facts, we wrote a research outline on what we learned. We even learned how to use APA format when citing our sources. Then we all made GOOD PowerPoints about what we researched. That means there were less words and more pictures, and we had to present more than just read the words off the slide. Then we showed them to two other students that researched the other topics so we could learn about everything. We are excited to finally start reading the book next week! Hello! Well I thought I would just do a check in! Right now the highlight is that we are doing PenPals with people in different places of the world! Some are from U.S.A, Canada, Mexico and more, even Australia. We discuss problems in the world and how we can solve them, mainly how to protect our planet and environment. We love doing this! Each person in the class has four PenPals so we can have a big discussion about a problem each week. This week we talked about the pollinator problem and how many bee species are dying so we might have food supply in the world. We're also going to learn about bleaching of the coral reefs and endangered animals. All of us have our own reasons for our thoughts and it is fun to share them and hear other peoples. We are also doing reading buddies where we help the kindergartners read and write. We help them write letters to their parents about what they are learning and school and also read picture books to them. On the holidays, we do fun activities relating to that holiday. We love helping them out, even though sometimes it's hard! Making Holiday Crafts With Our Buddies!Getting to know our PenPals!We finished The Giver! But unfortunately, we don't really know what happens to Jonas. That's because the ending is ambiguous. We learned that endings in stories can be ambiguous if they can be interpreted in more than one way. Some people in our class thought that Jonas was hallucinating (going crazy) and probably died at the end. Others thought he found Elsewhere and would live on with Gabe. What do you think happened to Jonas? After we finished reading, we took all our summary stickies from each chapter and put them together in sections like a plot diagram: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Then we worked in groups to write a summary of the book using the stickies and some good transition words. We wrote other sticky notes in our book too, like questions we had or predictions. We took all the question stickies out after reading the whole book and tried to answer as many as we could. Then we stuck them on a poster so we could see all our questions (there were a lot!). We could only answer mostly the lower level questions (level 1 and 2 on bloom's taxonomy) because the higher level ones didn't have the answers right there in the book. You had to do some research or ask the author! Check out the photos below of our hard work! Today I will talk to you about our latest topic: The three branches of government. They are the Legislative, Judicial, and Executive. We learned that the Legislative branch creates laws/bills. The Executive enforces the laws. And finally, Judicial interprets the law. The way we remember them is legislative and law both start with L, Executive and enforce both start with E, and Judicial and judge both start with J. To learn about these branches, we did a round-robin which is where we got into groups and were assigned a branch to study to research, make a web, and make a poster about. Then after we all made our posters we walked around and made webs of all the branches we did not study (before we made our posters we made a web of our branch). That way we learned all the details about each branch, their duties, their powers, and how they're organized. Right now, we are writing the biggest essay of our life (I might be exaggerating a teeny-weeny bit)!!!!! So far, we have just done part of our writing map outline. Then we will type them. They're gonna be monster essays! Bye! Hi! I'm back for just a minute. Don't tell Ms. Bad but I'm here to tell you about one of our "epic" failures! Recently we have been activating background knowledge to prepare us to read The Giver by Lois Lowry. This failure was with our first big group discussion called a Socratic Seminar. This Socratic Seminar was about euthanasia, which is a very controversial topic. Euthanasia is when someone (usually a doctor) gives a patient or person medicine that shortly after makes them die. Just like that, no pain, no nothing. Well, as you can imagine, a discussion on this topic was difficult to have because of all the opinions! This group discussion was our first one without Ms. Bad's help so we had a little trouble. "I talked a zillion times!" said Tanner. Because people didn't need to raise their hands and we just sat in a big circle with our chairs to discuss Ms. Bad's questions, it was crazy! We weren't supposed to interrupt students, but it was hard not to. After this Socratic Seminar failed, we talked as a class about ways to make it better. We talked about how this "failure" connects to a growth mindset, which our school is trying to get better at doing. A growth mindset means you believe that you can learn by trying new strategies. So we did it again and this time we talked more about Rites of Passage in our society and how they might happen in The Giver. This one was 100 times better! We had two smaller groups so only one half of the class discussed at a time, which helped with all the craziness from before. We had someone in charge of who was speaking too. We definitely learned from our mistakes and got it right the next time around. We're growing our growth mindsets! Now, got to go! Hey, I'm back! Well you have probably been wondering what we have been doing in this classroom cave. Well first, we did potions and then we learned how to ride a unicorn and then finally we practiced spells! No, we wish we were learning that but actually we have been doing lots of reading, writing, and more stuff. First we finished our great book Tuck Everlasting (our class recommends it), then we did an essay on whether we thought immortality was a blessing or a curse. Finally we did our projects on the story. Check out the photo gallery below to see some of our projects! We got to choose what type of project we did, like make posters, write short stories, make skits about scenes from the book, and some other stuff. We've also been practicing reading strategies like asking questions using Bloom's Taxonomy. Next we are going to be reading The Giver by Lois Lowry. Wow, lots of work! Sometimes, don't you wish you could turn into a baby and not go to school? Well, we think since we can't do this and we work sooooo hard in Ms. Bad's literacy class that you parents should at least give us ice-cream when we get home please! Well that's it for today so bye! |
AuthorLiteracy Linguist: Megan Archives
May 2018
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