Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Text-based Evidence, 5 Themes of Geography, Book Orders

Currently we are reading the novel Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. The first big focus of our discussions in reading workshop is "What can we tell about a character based on their actions, feelings, and dialogue?" Yesterday and today students have been working in groups to discuss what they have already figured out about Opal and her father, who she calls "the Preacher." Getting used to backing up your answer and explaining your thinking is a big step, and I heard GREAT conversations from around the classroom. One group even grabbed their Interactive Reading Notebook (see the photo on the right) to refer to our list of character traits. 


This year in social studies we will focus on two main topics...regions of the US and North Dakota. Everything we study will tie into these five themes of geography (see pic). Before we begin, however, we need a solid understanding of how to read maps, so this week we jumped into Chapter 2 and have studied map scale, lines of latitude and longitude, map keys (also called "legends"), and cardinal / intermediate directions. 



Last, but not least...ordering from the Scholastic book order. The website to order online is on the front cover of the flyer, right below the heading and our class ordering code. To get into our classroom ordering page, you'll need the code GTTYN.

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