November 28

Between the internet being down at school and days off for conferences, our staff inservice, and Thanksgiving, it's been a while since my last post!  Let me try to catch up...

We're working on narrative writing, and we've been looking at and trying various prewriting activities.  Students have brainstormed, done a freewrite, created lists, answered the 5W and H questions, and put events in order with a timeline.  They're well prepared, I hope, to begin the drafts of their experiences!  Students will be working to clearly describe their experiences and the lessons learned, and they will be incorporating dialogue into their narratives.  We've read some examples of narrative writing and learned about the parts we'll need to include--an interesting beginning, middle, and end--and spent a few minutes getting the drafting process started.  More serious drafting will happen this week!

We continue to read, think about, and appreciate the language of poetry.  We've recently read Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and Mary Howitt's "The Spider and the Fly."  In each of these poems we noticed the intentional rhythm and rhyme, and though the subjects of the poems were very different, we learned an important lesson from each one. 

We've added to our list of homophones, and we've gone over words such as you're and your, theirs and there's, and two, to, and too.  Students have practiced using these words, and they are working to be sure that they use them correctly in their writing! 

Students are reading and writing in their journals.  It's exciting to see the progress many of them are making in their books!  Students, please remember to read at home, too!

Returning from the Thanksgiving break provided the perfect opportunity for us to write about giving thanks.  After spending a few minutes discussing Thanksgiving, students spent time drafting a 125-word response to the question "What are you thankful for?"  I was proud of their answers.  Students gave thanks for faith, family, and freedom.  They mentioned the ways in which God provides for their needs, they gave thanks for life, and they expressed gratitude for the gift of salvation.  Amen!