Tuesday, 10/24/17
We took A LOT of notes today. I asked the students to review. Here are the notes: We read most of "Stormalong," the story of the week. Then we continued working on the Jose Limon essay. Most students have finished their introduction and first body paragraph. Tomorrow, our goal is to finish the planning for the last 2 body paragraphs and then to finish the essay.
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Today we started our next essay. We began our prewrite.
Prompt: Jose Limon went through a lot to become a famous dancer and choreographer. Write an expository essay about his life. Source 1 is the textbook. Students can access it on ThinkCentral. The story is called "Jose! Born to Dance," and it is Lesson 10. We took notes using Source 1. Source 2 is here. I asked the students to read Source 2 over the weekend and underline/highlight phrases that would help support the prompt. On Monday, we will discuss what we underlined/highlighted to figure out how to split the information gathered into the 3 body paragraphs for our essay. Happy Weekend! This week, while reading "The Power of W.O.W!", we talked about Theme. Theme is the lesson learned in the story that can also be applied to every day life. We discussed the theme of "The Power of W.O.W" and how to figure it out using clues from the story. Here are the notes.
We also talked about more prefixes: non- and mis-. Here are the notes. Today, the students turned in their Thurgood Marshall essay. Tomorrow, we begin the new essay. Slowly, but surely, the students are getting better with their essays. Today we continued working on the Thurgood Marshall essay. Students should be done with it by tomorrow. Writer's Workshop will begin tomorrow. I will meet with each student one-on-one to revise and edit their essay. The students saw their last essay, so hopefully they will learn from their mistakes. Here are samples of the top 3 alligator and crocodile essays between both classes: Essay 1, Essay 2, Essay 3. Keep in mind, I met with these students one-on-one, and they followed my advice when they rewrote their essay.
Today we took notes on Cause and Effect, and we also took notes on Using Context Clues. Please review. We will continue talking about these lessons throughout the week. The students wrote the definitions for the new words this week. They had 20 minutes. Tomorrow, we begin reading the story of the week: "My Librarian is a Camel" (Lesson 3). We finally started out next essay (a little late than expected, but at least we got started). The students received their two sources, which also includes the prompt. Here are the sources with the prompt.
We read through the sources and underlined all the important facts that were directly related to the prompt. It is important that the students practice underlining ONLY the important facts. The majority of them just underline whole sentences and paragraphs. Then, when it comes time to organize their ideas and write their essay, they don't know what to use. The source link above shows the phrases we underlined. After we underlined the important facts, we set up our Planning sheet. We discussed how best to split the details into the three body paragraphs. We decided to split the facts into Early Life, Law School, Brown vs. Board of Education. Then, we read each underlined fact and wrote it in the column where it belongs. We organized the first page of the first source together, then the students were left on their own to organize the rest of the underlined ideas of both sources. If they didn't finish in class, then they had to finish for homework. Here is the planning portion we did together in class. Tomorrow, we start writing our essay. Here is the Essay Format, in case anyone needs it again. Today we took notes on Quotations. You can locate them here.
We read the story "Jose! Born to Dance," which is lesson 10 in the textbook. We continued practicing how to answer written response questions using RACE (which follows the same format as the body paragraphs of essays: topic sentence, cite, explain). Here is the example we did together in class: Color Key Topic Sentence (use words from the question) Cite Evidence Explain/Elaborate 1. How does Jose's mood change from the time he arrives in New York to the following winter? Jose's mood changes from the time he arrives in New York to the following winter. According to "Jose! Born to Dance", on page 294 the author states that Jose arrived thinking he would "become a great artist" and "would fill his sketchbooks with drawings like the world has never seen." This shows that he was happy and excited when he arrived in New York. The following winter, the author states that a "cold loneliness settled over Jose." He became "discouraged" and felt that his "drawings would never compare." It is obvious that Jose is unhappy in New York after some time. ***** Please notice that the answer begins with a topic sentence that takes words from the question. When students are asked for EVIDENCE, it is expected that they find words and phrases within the text that would help them answer the question. Then they have to EXPLAIN WHY or HOW the evidence answers the question. Here are the steps to get on Think Central to access the textbook:
1. get on the website: thinkcentral.com 2. Click: "Reading and Language Arts" 3. Click "Journeys" 4. Make sure you have the following information: --Country: United States --State: Florida --District: Broward Charter Schools -- School: Somerset Academy-miramar, Miramar 33027 --Your username and password is stapled to your planner 5. Click "Log In" 6. Click "My Library" 7. On the bottom left, Click "Reading" 8. Click "Journeys Student Book" to access the textbook Please let me know if you are still having difficulties getting to the textbook. |
Mrs. Wilkie4th grade Reading and Language Arts Teacher. Archives
April 2018
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