Reading and Writing

Writing
Our "I can" statement this week was as follows: I can create a three paragraph essay by including the following: a catchy title, include three paragraphs each on a different topic, a closing, 2 adjectives, one compound sentence, and use a dictionary to check my spelling.

Students created a three paragraph essay to describe what they did during their holiday break. On Monday, students brainstormed their ideas and began their rough drafts. Tuesday they continued writing their rough drafts. Wednesday we brainstormed adjectives to go with each of our senses a lesson I borrowed from 4th Grade Folics, and then they added at least 2 new adjectives to their papers. Thursday we worked on making compound sentences in our writing, and then finally they began writing their final drafts. Here is a picture of the students' completed writing posted outside of our classroom.

To conclude our writing lesson for the week and to make sure students really understood how to create and include a compound sentence in their writing, our ELL teacher Mr. Martinez had students write a short description about another student in the class without giving away their identity and to include a compound sentence. Students wrote their descriptions for about 10 minutes, and then took turns standing up to share so we could all take a guess.



Reading

This week in Reading students worked with their partners to participate in a shared reading to evaluate the author's purpose using the text My Brother Martin by Christine King Farris. The students participated in purposeful talk visualizing and making predictions, while learning about MLK during his childhood. On Wednesday, this week I shared another mentor text A Nation's Hope a Story of Boxing Legend Joe Louis. I used this text for students to compare and contrast the subjects. Joe Louis's biography discussed the time of Adolf Hitler so before reading the text with my class I showed them a video on Brainpop titled "Adolf Hitler". We summarized the video and discussed the difficult times faced by Germans and Americans. The boys really loved this picture book, and they all cheered at the end.