Project-based Learning

The last two weeks...wow, have they flown! We have been busy beavers!!!

In writing workshop we have asked some tough questions about our characters. What is the problem they are facing (bummer!), and what do they really want. Our characters need to be believable and real, not too perfect or plastic. We developed story arcs (or plotlines...our plan for how our story will take place) and challenged ourselves to write multiple possible endings. We are now taking those story arcs and beginning to draft scene by scene. Our task will be big as we work to SHOW what our characters are going through using action and diologue, not summarize and relay the "play by play" like a sports announcer. The mentor texts we used this week were A Bad Case of the Stripes and Milo and the Mysterious Island. 

The first three stories we studied in our reading lessons were all focused on scientists and their work with animals. As a culminating projects we read a biography of Jane Goodall and her work with chimpanzees, which we will use to write a spotlight about her life. In order to take notes on only the most important information, I taught the class how to write notes "Tarzan style." We watched the clip from the movie Tarzan and Jane to compare how Tarzan and Jane communicate. Tarzan says very little, only the most important word, while Jane takes what Tarzan says and elaborates...greatly! Each time we determined a "Tarzan word" we wrote it on a post-it note. Next week we'll use these notes to launch our writing.

During math we are continuing to work with concepts of multiplication: finding factors, writing multiples, identifying prime and composite numbers, and applying multiplication strategies to games (like Factor Captor) and problem solving situations. 

The obvious favorite activity of the last few days has been our immigrant collage project in social studies. Unit 3 focused on 5 major waves of immigrants who settled the US: Native Americans, Spanish Americans, European Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans. Students are working in 4 groups to become "experts" on one of these groups, create objects to share with the class, and prepare a presentation to present to their classmates. Early next week we will put the finishing touches on our presentations and present to our classmates. The following week we will invite our first grade buddies for a visit and share our presentation with them as well!

This week's book recommendations (each title is linked if you want to find the book online)! #1 - Frindle. Anything by Andrew Clements is fabulous and usually pretty humorous! If you like this one there are many more by him to choose from! #2 - The Burger and the Hot Dog. Hysterical poetry about food! #3 - Top of the Order. John Coy is from the Twin Cities and has written many great books for boys. My family used to spend our annual summer vacation at a resort with several members of his extended family. A few years I was lucky enough to meet him when he was the visiting author sponsored by Valley Reading! This book is part of a series of books on boys playing sports. 

This week I introduced the class to a website called Wonderopolis. Each day they feature a new "Wonder of the Day." GREAT source of informational reading, and many of the challenging words have definitions that pop up if you hover over them. They have over 1500 Wonders and I believe all the past ones are still on the website!!! Yesterday we read about how fast bullets travel. SUPER interesting!!!

Last, but not least, and certainly not least important...last week Mrs. Fillippi visited with the class during her  lesson about creating a plan for being successful in school and achieving our best. She visited about making a plan for homework. After she left we brainstormed a list of "homework" activities that should be part of our weekly routine. Over the next few days off I would highly recommend visiting with your kiddo about what type of weekly plan you might develop for doing these things. We didn't establish a routine as a class since I know everyone has activities on different nights of the week. The following activities can and should be completed weekly as often as possible: 10-20 minutes of keyboarding, 10-20 minutes of practicing math facts, Weekly Word Writing, and 10-20 minutes (once we get our small groups going) practicing spelling words. You could choose one per night (i.e.: math facts on Monday, typing on Tuesday, etc), but it might be better to plan for 2 shorter sessions of 2 of these activities each night since shorter bursts of practice more frequently will lead to better retention of skills (i.e.: 10 min each of typing & math). 

Sofie's yummy birthday brownies!

Realistic Fiction Review, Round 3

Praise for Dan's A School Day for Dominic

• I like how the character was mean at first, but by the end he was helping the kid he was mean to. 
• I like how you made the main character the bully instead of the bully being the person the main character dealt with.
• It was a good choice to have the story take place in only a day or two instead of five weeks, and you chose to have a narrator instead of the main character telling the story.
• I like how you made the character stammer every time he was nervous, that really showed that he was on the spot. It was great that you created a struggle for the main character and showed how he had to work through his own issues.

Praise for Ethan's Tornado Days

• I like that you used onomatopoeia words like, "Crack!" and then when he hugged his mom so hard he almost choked her. 
• I liked the description you used of the tornado and all the things that happened to him as he tried to escape, especially when you said "a light pole came flying down the stairs."
• That situation would have been SO scary for him...home alone with his cat when a tornado came, and not knowing where his mom is and whether or not she was safe. 
• At the very end you really showed all of the emotions the little boy had been dealing with, how they all came out at once, and how relief kind of washed over him at the end when he was reunited with his mom. 

Praise for Andy's Best Frenemies

• GREAT word choice: scrambled, hesitated, interrupted, yawned, rushed, forked, scuttled, banged, scurried
• I like how your story was a life lesson since you had two friends who got into a fight and had to figure out a way to become friends again. It was a very real story, so much that you almost feel like you want to cry with the character when they get into their fight.
• I liked how you described the characters, especially when Cal got to Joe's house and you expected him to be mad still. But then when Cal asks him to be friends again he screams, "Yes!"

Praise for Emily's Plans, Plans, and More Plans

• I liked how you lengthened your story and based it a little off of Dolphin Tale. That made the setting and storyline very unique and different from everyone else's story.
• I liked how the dialogue between the mom and the kids showed a lot of attitude. 
• I liked how you had so many characters but kept control of them. You were very descriptive in how you described the characters, what they were saying, the expressions on their faces... You could totally see Katelynn and her 3 siblings interacting. 
• The characters had a very clear plan for how to work together to save the dolphin. 

Praise for Aron's If I Could Win? 

• I liked all the description you had about people, like when he came home from sneaking away to the scrap yard, that his parents were waiting on the porch, and how they didn't look happy.
• I liked how you made everything seem so real,  like his mom made him go to bed at 8:00. His parents seemed so overprotective, even though he's 18. 
• I like how even though it's short, you really created an entire storyline. It was fast-paced and kept my attention.
• I liked how at the beginning he was kind of rusty and had to overcome a few obstacles, and then at the end he won his race.

Praise for Bailey's The Stunt

• You had a ton of chapters, but the way you eased them together made it really flow.
• I liked when your character met Katie and said, "I might have a little crush on her."
• You used great description like, "They ran down stairs so fast you would have thought they teleported."
• I liked relationship you created between Eric and his brother. They were constantly being trouble makers and calling each other names that were very quick witted and fitting to the situation, like "Hey, weatherman..." when Kyle came in yelling about a  tornado.

Realistic Fiction Reviews, Round 2

Praise for Ellie's The Unexpected Call 

• I loved your characters. They were very real, and the older brother added humor to the story.
• You created a great story without rambling, which is hard to do.
• The problem was something you couldn't fix (her dad was going back on active duty); it was very real life because it was something she just had to be ok with.
• It really seemed like real life with the way you described their home and the relationship between Sam and her brother.

Praise for Jack's My Aunt is a Fraud

• Excellent job creating realistic characters (i.e.: as her face turned as red as a fire truck).
• Great word choice! Our favorites... "Everyone ran out of school like a bomb dropped." "Miller kept giving me the death stare." You also used great words for said and action verbs. 
• I loved that your story had humor without overdoing it, you used just enough to make it light-hearted but not the focus of the story. The description of his sister's Fairy Failure Bedroom was hilarious. 
• Jake and the other characters seemed so real:, especially when Jake pranked his sister,  and how his dog seemed like a real person to him. I love the name Jack Crocket.  

Praise for Amy's Scary Party

• I liked how you had so many characters, but you kept control of them and knew who did what.  You kept everyone straight and managed the roles of who was more important, kind of like our  primary, secondary, background, and stock characters that we talked about in reading. 
• I loved that your story was scary, but not "ghost scary."
• Your illustrations were fabulous!!!
• I loved how they talked back to each other.  Your characters were very realistic and easy to picture.   My favorite line was,  "We don't run, we fight!" I also loved when the characters yelled, "Jinx!" at the same time.

Praise for Charlie's Brotherly Love

• I really liked the humor and how Zack and Tris kept playing tricks on them.
• I loved when the parents yelled at his siblings, "You're grounded for three months!" and then made them pick up dog poop outside (which was usually Mikey's job)
• Your title is so clever since it's the exact opposite of their relationship.
• Great voice from your character: "I'm taking a risk by having a sleepover...at my house. But it's so worth it..."  And the part where his parents apologize by saying, "I'm sorry, Zack and Tris don't usually act this way." (which they obviously know isn't true), and Mikey says, "Yeah, right."

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.