October learning

We have learned a lot this past month. We completed standardized testing, completed the first marking term, harvested green beans, learned about main idea, folktales/fairy tales, had an author come visit, CSU had a professor come read a story to the kids, storybook character parade, parent conferences, and we completed our final narrative writing piece.

Clubs

For early release day on October 15th the kids went to Mrs. Ardrey's class for animal club. In animal club they learned about Australian animals and made a kangaroo!

Author Visit

Mrs. Merrithew arranged to have an Author come and read to the kids in the school. She also taught the kids about the book publishing process and had them help act it out.

We also had a professor from CSU come to our class for Read for the Record. She read the story Bunny cakes. All the kids enjoyed her energy when reading and her bunny ears!

Narrative Writing

Since September we have been working on writing narratives. We also focused on the writing process. For our first writing project kids wrote about their best friend. They wrote a rough draft in their journals and then they revised their writing. When revising their work they looked for 

punctuation, using capitals where they are supposed to be, spelling, and the organization of their thoughts. Once done revising their work they then wrote a final copy. Each student also created a picture of their best friend to go along with their writing. 

Another writing project we did was on a special person in their lives. Some kids wrote about their parents, some wrote about friends, and some wrote about their siblings. When writing they used the same writing process that they used for their previous writing projects. 

For grammar lessons kids were learning about what an adjective is. Our definition of an adjective was a word that describes a noun. We did several activities with adjectives including a bag project. The kids LOVED the bag project. They put something in a bag, then they wrote adjectives about it on the outside of the bag. The rest of the class had to then guess what was inside. One of the hardest things for us to guess was an ear of corn! We were all tricked by that one. To complete our study of adjectives kids created a bat and then had to write about their bat, using adjectives to describe it. 

Main Idea

This month in reading we spent a couple weeks learning about main idea. This was a difficult concept for many kids to understand. One activity that was helpful was when we made a main idea table. Kids learned that the supporting details in a story/book support the main idea just like the legs on a table support the table top. This visual really helped the kids understand main idea.

Later on we read a nonfiction book on spiders. Then identified the supporting details and main idea. This was tricky since it was a nonfiction text however, the kids did a great job!