Upon returning from Mardi GRAS break, we will be learning how to write our own multimedia book! This is a revolutionary practice that will make you all ground breakers of sorts! I hope to work along side Mrs. Henley and Mrs. Tschudy to line up our curriculum goals with the information you are already learning in class. We will be doing extended research, and learn how to use that research to write exciting text for others to use in the regular classroom! This will require you to ask questions, record science experiments, interview experts, etc. We will use all of this information to write our texts as we go. You will each be assigned a blog that is yours. You will use those blogs as a rough draft writing center for others to critique. You will use our class blog as a source for assignments, resources, and prompts.
Get ready for an exciting return! Practice your keyboarding skills over te break so we can make progress more quickly!
Friday, February 17, 2012
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
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
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!
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!
Friday, December 9, 2011
St. Elmo's Third Graders have done it!
Kade and Xavier, two of St. Elmo's brightest have created their very own book trailer!
Initially, we viewed a book trailer about the book, The Mitten. Then, I talked to them about our purpose for reading and said, "We are going to make our own book trailer for The Christmas Wreath." I asked them to watch the The Mitten book trailer again, and tell me what makes the audience want to read the story.
Xavier said:
1.) It has a problem.
2.) It is a glimpse of the story.
3.) It makes you wonder.
4.) It has a picture on the cover.
Kade said:
1.) It has good music.
2.) The words stay up there long enough for you to read it.
3.) It is made of still pictures.
4.) It gives credit to the author.
Finally, we prepared for the making of our own book trailer by reading, The Christmas Wreath, but before we started, I asked them to think about these three things as we read:
1.) summary of the story
2.) think of something that might make others want to read it
3.) think of a question to ask your audience
Kade took notes mostly composed of predictions in the form of questions as we read the story, and Xavier did a lot of summarizing (Xavier also answered many of Kade's questions).
As we read the story and looked over their notes, one of the boys established that it was a mystery story. So, "It's a mystery," became the theme of our book trailer. Once we established our theme, we had to decide which direction to go. Xavier suggested our hook should be, "Who made the wreath?" and Kade eventually revised his idea to read, "Can you solve the mystery?" Once they came up with their hook about who, we decided make a web of the characters to help us organize our descriptions of each character. Their list was composed of the elves, the chief elf, the polar bear, and Santa. After we spent a few minutes attaching adjectives to each of the characters, we looked over our descriptions and replaced our initial adjectives with WOW words.
Finally, we wrote our outline for the plot. Each number represented a slide in the trailer starting with number one, "It's a mystery involving...". We followed suit with slides describing each character and wrapped it up with, "Can you help Santa discover the mystery behind the Christmas wreath miracle?"
Front beginning to finish, this process took about 105 minutes. After we read the story aloud together, I transcribed what they dictated, and they were responsible for everything else in the process including drag and drop, cropping, text insertion, taking the pictures of the pages with the iPad, and choosing the music. I posted it to the web, haven't stopped hearing about doing another one since. Student book trailer number one: SUCCESS!
Initially, we viewed a book trailer about the book, The Mitten. Then, I talked to them about our purpose for reading and said, "We are going to make our own book trailer for The Christmas Wreath." I asked them to watch the The Mitten book trailer again, and tell me what makes the audience want to read the story.
Xavier said:
1.) It has a problem.
2.) It is a glimpse of the story.
3.) It makes you wonder.
4.) It has a picture on the cover.
Kade said:
1.) It has good music.
2.) The words stay up there long enough for you to read it.
3.) It is made of still pictures.
4.) It gives credit to the author.
Finally, we prepared for the making of our own book trailer by reading, The Christmas Wreath, but before we started, I asked them to think about these three things as we read:
1.) summary of the story
2.) think of something that might make others want to read it
3.) think of a question to ask your audience
Kade took notes mostly composed of predictions in the form of questions as we read the story, and Xavier did a lot of summarizing (Xavier also answered many of Kade's questions).
As we read the story and looked over their notes, one of the boys established that it was a mystery story. So, "It's a mystery," became the theme of our book trailer. Once we established our theme, we had to decide which direction to go. Xavier suggested our hook should be, "Who made the wreath?" and Kade eventually revised his idea to read, "Can you solve the mystery?" Once they came up with their hook about who, we decided make a web of the characters to help us organize our descriptions of each character. Their list was composed of the elves, the chief elf, the polar bear, and Santa. After we spent a few minutes attaching adjectives to each of the characters, we looked over our descriptions and replaced our initial adjectives with WOW words.
Finally, we wrote our outline for the plot. Each number represented a slide in the trailer starting with number one, "It's a mystery involving...". We followed suit with slides describing each character and wrapped it up with, "Can you help Santa discover the mystery behind the Christmas wreath miracle?"
Front beginning to finish, this process took about 105 minutes. After we read the story aloud together, I transcribed what they dictated, and they were responsible for everything else in the process including drag and drop, cropping, text insertion, taking the pictures of the pages with the iPad, and choosing the music. I posted it to the web, haven't stopped hearing about doing another one since. Student book trailer number one: SUCCESS!
Monday, December 5, 2011
The Mitten Book Trailer
Be sure to check back for a book trailer previewing Welcome Comfort made by one of our very own Explorers! Also, don't forget Reading Night is December 7, 2011! I hear it's going to be a Winter Wonderland worth remembering!
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