Realistic Fiction Reviews, Round 1

Praise for Raina's A Guide to Friendship

• I love that you began with such good description of your characters.  It was a great way to begin since I felt like I  really knew everyone.
• You used great words..."The girls practically teleported together." "Her hand shot up like a bullet." "...she said, slouching."
• Your character faced such a real problem. (Her mom wouldn't let her open a Facebook account until she was 13.)
• Your characters were just...so...mean!!!! I could really picture them and tell that they were mean girls.

Praise for Julia's From Snakes to a Dog

• It's hard to present a lot of people in a story and keep them straight, and you did a great job executing that.
• My favorite part is that you chose to write it about snakes.
• Even though the character was really sad that he had to give up his pet snakes, you kept it from getting too serious be putting in funny parts.
• I loved the ending when he went from being super sad to suddenly perky and said, "I'm going to go get a dog!" That was really funny.
• Great word choice and humor!!! Including the actual phone number was a great idea since it made it more realistic.

Praise for Brody's Crunch

• I loved all the humor. Naming the alligator Snappy and titling it Crunch was super creative!!!
• The character's responses to each other were very well done and showed a lot of expression. "What?!" "Sure!" Excellent dialogue between characters!!!
• My favorite line was the mom saying, "Those animal control guys are gonna be MAD. I slipped them a $10 instead of $100."
• You really made it real life since they characters were blackmailing one another. "If you tell my mom, I'm gonna tell everyone that you kissed Hanna Jones at the school picnic."

Praise for Taylor's Meatloaf Day

• I loved that it reminded me of the movie Home Alone a lot, since the robbers were slipping on marbles, cars, wet stairs, etc. I also liked that he and his friend bonded over booger meatloaf. Great job choosing creative names.
• I liked it because they were getting robbed and they didn't even realize it because the robbers were having such bad luck. The friends bonded in such an odd way.
• I loved it because you put so much humor in. My favorite line was when the pizza delivery guy arrived and said, "Enjoy your pink princess pizza and have a pinky dink night!"
• I loved all the humor and the names!!! Great job creating names like "Minecat" for their game.

Wrapping Up the Week!

How on earth is it FEBRUARY already?! With report cards in the works and conferences beginning next week I am quite surprised at the realization that we are almost two-thirds of the way through our year...yikes!!! 

First up...Picture of the Day!

This week we discussed the skill of inferring / inferencing / making inferences (however you want to say it), and how not only in books, but also in games (Brody mentioned Clue), movies, commercials, etc. we make these constantly as we consider evidence (details) we see or read combined without our schema (what we already know from past experiences) to "read between the lines." In Picture of the Day students spend time carefully observing a photograph (we used pictures to remove the barrier of reading text at all different levels), and then using those observations to make inferences. After examining all aspects of the photograph we begin discussing what we can infer is happening. Students are then asked to record their inferences with evidence used to support their thinking. This skill has a direct correlation to making inferences in our reading, as becoming good "inferrers" requires us to carefully examine not only the big events happening in our story, but also the little details, such as how a character's tone of voice tells us about their emotions. Next week students will move into completing this activity with a partner. 

This week's roots and our "concept map." Each week we have been color coding chunks in order to visualize each word in pieces that make sense for both meaning and spelling patterns. Our working vocabularies are growing by leaps and bounds! Again...someone found another word (emphasize) in their reading just today!!! 

Ok, so this isn't from our classroom...but we did have our 100th day of school this week. My munchkin dressed up for kindergarten. Apparently he walked with a limp and a wobbly hand anytime he walked around the classroom. LOL!

Our Learning Bank trip to the FM Symphony to hear Beethoven. It was fabulous!!! I was so thrilled to hear Dr. Herschberger from Concordia (who I was privileged to take lessons from) perform with the Symphony on piano, and even more thrilled that my students recognized many of the pieces he played. 

Heads in for Round Robin long division! This week I introduced long division, and we've been practicing over the past few days. Today we worked in teams to practice and coach one another through the process. Sometimes you just need another fourth grader instead of a thirty-four year old explaining the process for the thirty-fourth time. :) Each team worked independently to solve the same problem at their pod. The activity was very clearly stated to NOT be a race, rather the opportunity to work together as coaches to support one another and have the common goal of achieving the same answer as a team. To make sure we didn't race we put into place pause and resume "buttons", so that at any time a group member could "pause" their team to ask for help or double check the next step and "resume" when ready. I was SO impressed by the way everyone dove right in, tackled the work, and constantly coached one another through. They worked carefully and accurately, and everyone ended the day feeling successful and supported. Yeah!!! (Oh, and don't ask where I was standing to take this picture...)