Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We started a new unit in our writer's workshop this week.  We started writing small moment stories; stories that are personal narratives about something that we have done or experienced.  We discussed that when we choose a story to write about we need to think about why we wish to tell the story.  Sometimes, we tell stories to amuse, sometimes to create excitement and sometimes we tell stories to share our expertise (such as in our all about books).  We used many different mentor texts in our read alouds.  Mentor texts are books by already published authors that reflect what we are learning. We also explored these small moment books in our classroom and created a classroom anchor chart reflecting different topics that we could write stories about.  The students learned the difference between a "big" story (such as going on a vacation or a holiday celebration) and a "small" story (such as a hiking Mt. Mansfield on my vacation, or making pizza dough for my daughter's birthday party).  In the weeks to come, the students will participate in a series of lessons about how we stretch these stories out and make them interesting by adding interesting word choice, adjectives, dialogue, and pictures. 

The students continued reading in their reading groups this week as well.  We are in the midst of a unit exploring character traits.  In particular, the students are exploring what the characters are like on the inside, as seen through their actions, feelings and words.  Rarely do authors of fictional stories state what a character is like.  The reader has to figure it out, and as a detective, find the evidence for the traits through these acts, words or feelings.  We have added many new words to our vocabulary tree in this process as well!!!  For example, we have talked about what cautious, thoughtful, fearless and brave mean.  Ask your child to ask what other character traits we found in our stories.

Report cards went home today.  They are inside your child's backpack.  Please read these reports with your child, keep the report card at home, but return the empty envelope with your signature on it on Monday.  That way, I know that you received it.  Thank you.  As always, if you have any questions or concerns about your child's report card, let me know.

I hope you will all have a great and restful weekend.

Regards,
Maria