Friday, January 13, 2012

Research, Book Reviews, and a Touch of Art

I am at a student teacher conference at the University today, but Mrs. Cole and I have a big, technology, research, and recording filled day in store for you nonetheless! I can't wait to see you all again next week. Enjoy your Monday holiday, and be sure to reflect on the rights and privileges that Martin Luther King Jr spent his life trying to achieve for us. Check out this video below to learn a thing or two about this man who is a hero to so many.



Work hard today. Remember, we have a lot to get accomplished before February 16, and very few days to make it happen!

Author Study LP 01.13

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Narrative Essay Contest

Please leave our Explorer Team positive, helpful CONSTRUCTIVE criticism that will be valuable for another round of revisions for these essays. They look forward to your feedback. You may leave your feedback as a comment indicating the essay you are critiquing by the entry contestant number.

Narrative Essay Contest

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Author Study: Jan Brett

Today, we are going to launch a project that will be produced for the February 17th, 2012 Reading Rally. This year's reading rally theme is Jan Brett's book, The Mitten. So to prepare ourselves for this enormous undertaking, we need to get to know the author. Click here, or the image below to visit her extensive website.



As a child, Jan Brett decided to be an illustrator and spent many hours reading and drawing. She says, "I remember the special quiet of rainy days when I felt that I could enter the pages of my beautiful picture books. Now I try to recreate that feeling of believing that the imaginary place I'm drawing really exists. The detail in my work helps to convince me, and I hope others as well, that such places might be real."

Today, I want you to imagine that you are one of the animals from the story, only you know something about the mitten that the Jan Brett didn't mention... when you wiggle your way inside the mitten, it transforms your world into anything you can imagine. For your descriptive writing essay, I would like you to think of MANY, VARIED, and UNUSUAL things that you might see. What does it smell like? How does it make you feel? Who's there? What are they doing?

Remember, your essay will be used as narration for what your character is doing during our performance. You must be EXTREMELY DESCRIPTIVE. When I read your work, I want to feel like I have been transported to your imaginary world. Be sure to use similes and appropriate adjectives to convey the image that you want your audience to visualize.

A sideline project we will be touching on today is one that will help us develop our public speaking skills. Each week, from now until our Reading Rally, we will record ourselves reading a poem. This week's pic was The Bear, The Fire, and The Snow by Shel Silverstein. Below, you can see a clip of Byron and David reading away. Check in to watch our progress!

Monday, January 2, 2012

Visualizing with Torn Paper

Mrs. Luckey's third grade class listened to the Australian creation story. As part of developing our visualization comprehension strategy, they picked a scene that they visualized during the reading and illustrated it with crayons and torn paper. Click play on the slideshow below to see their great results!