Our Grade 5 and 6 students have been tasked with a fun writing project this week: "YOU are the #1 Real Estate agent in the city. You've been able to sell every house at any price. Now... you've been asked to sell your first haunted house! Create a booklet to describe every detail of the house to potential buyers. You must tell the truth about the house, but you should try to put a positive spin on it. After all, 'fixer-upper' houses are a hot commodity these days! Can you sell it?" Our main focus for this writing project is to use adjectives and descriptions to enrich our word choice and sentence complexity. Students are doing SO WELL on this! We are also aiming to extend the quantity of our writing - expectations at this stage are to write "increasingly longer and more complex texts" of "several joined paragraphs." We wrote one paragraph a day this week - wow! Your children are showing such dedication, perseverance and hard work in their writing tasks. I'm SO proud of them all! A few examples of the transformations in their writing that I'm seeing daily: "I see a cat" becomes "I see a dark, purring cat that waits for me on the windowsill." "There is a ghost" becomes "There is a shadowy, screeching ghost that circles above my head." "I open the door" becomes "As I turn the rusty doorknob, I step inside the house with spin-chilling fear." Adjectives and descriptions are REALLY helping our writing! I'm blown away by how much their writing has improved with just this one activity. Below is the rubric that I will use to assess students. I find it helpful to show the class the expectations BEFORE they begin to write, so they know exactly how they will be marked. I have a class of ADJECTIVE masters! Take a look at this: On Friday, students also enjoyed making a creative Haunted House title page. Apparently junior students are not too old for crafts :-)
0 Comments
We began our Global Education Inquiry by looking at photos of how some children around the world get to school. This year, we've had a lot of interruptions to our bussing... but after looking at these photos we all agreed: whether we walk, bike, bus or drive to school this year, we are blessed. As we learn about school traditions in different countries, students are creating a non-fiction booklet of their learning. Each tab of our booklet is dedicated to a different country, and includes 3-4 facts about school traditions, a few sentences to answer a specific question, a picture and a caption. We're also exploring the following resources as a class, and learning so much about how education across our globe has both similarities and differences. Students have been asking about my travels and experiences teaching abroad, so next week I'll present to them about Nepal (and hiking the Himalayas) and then later Kenya/Tanzania (and hiking Kilimanjaro). I can't wait to show them photos of my students and classrooms in developing countries. Spoiler Alert: we have SO MUCH here!
Take a look at the final copies of our #WhatLiftsUs writing. Wow! Doesn't it look great? Your children are AUTHORS! If you would like to specifically see what your child has written, their work is in Google Classroom.
I'm so proud of how students have really worked through the writing process over the last two weeks. First, they brainstormed their ideas using graphic organizers. Next, they wrote a rough draft, and then revised and edited using a checklist we created as a class. Currently, we are in the process of creating a good copy (photos to come!). We also decided to create our OWN set of unique, collaborative wings for this project! Students blended paint for a background and then used a special Prismacolour pencil to create designs. Take a look at our own version of the #WhatLiftsYou wings! The best part: they're what we call "interactive art" which means they come alive when WE jump in the photo! Seriously, LOOK at how INCREDIBLE your children are! I couldn't post all the pics (FYI - I teach 50 kids...) but if you would like your child's wing photo, just email me. You'll also see it when they finish the good copy of their writing (next week's post!)
|
Mrs JorgensenThis page is written by Mrs. Jorgensen, who loves the smell of a brand new book! Archives
March 2021
Categories |