Monthly Archives: October 2015

Exciting challenge for all of my writing classes!

Dear families:

In November, I would like to extend the challenge to each of the writers in my writing classes to participate in NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month! This challenge will see students writing an entire novel by the end of the month of November!

Here is a bit of background from the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program’s website:  

“National Novel Writing Month happens every November! It’s a fun, seat-of-your-pants writing event where the challenge is to complete an entire novel in just 30 days. For one month, you get to lock away your inner editor, let your imagination take over, and just create!

That means participants begin writing November 1 and must finish by midnight, November 30. The word-count goal for our adult program is 50,000 words, but the Young Writers Program (YWP) allows 17-and-under participants to set reasonable, yet challenging, individual word-count goals.”

 

The purpose of this challenge is not to create a flawlessly designed book, but to dive deeply into the creative process of building a complex storyline and dynamic characters. This process will see your child at times feeling a bit blocked and even perhaps frustrated, but sticking with a story to make it truly a chapter book will have transformative power over their writing identities; it will be a chance for them to really dive in to the talent and potential they all have hiding inside as writers!

The biggest obstacle we are facing with this project is that we will not be able to spend much (if any) class time dedicated to it during the month of November as we’ll have to be writing essays; therefore, it will have to be an at-home project.

I very strongly encourage your child to participate. I have a number of resources that I will share with you to help your child if they decide to accept the challenge, and I will be happy to help you as much as possible throughout the month! I have set up an educator account with the organization and if your child does register for the program, I will add them as a student so that I can see their progress and give them help as they go along, whenever I can.


I would suggest starting now to help your child prepare for this challenge. Here’s how:

  1. Go to this website to create an account for your child. They are required to have an email address for this. All 4th and 5th graders at CBES have Gmail accounts (which we have not done anything with yet in class) that you could use to register them.
  2. Send me an email at katherine.cherry@acps.k12.va.us to let me know you have registered your child. I will find them on the database and add them to my class.
  3. Look through the resources that the website offers – you will find many helpful items to get your child started!
  4. Have a designated destination for your child’s work on their novel – in a special notebook? On a computer? On their Google Drive account? You decide what works best for your child.
  5. Set aside time for them to write every day throughout the month of November – 30 minutes a day should be enough, but maybe they will want more! 🙂

On a few days (3-4 days altogether) during November, we will take some class time to use as “workshop time” for kids to receive guidance and coaching from me while working on their novels, but most of their work on this project will have to be at home. Thanks for your understanding about our obligations.

Please email me with any questions you have! I am excited about this project and am here to help. I hope you and your child will decide to participate!

Setting: Comparing and contrasting our independent books with Fish

This week, students started reading independent books which have strong connections with our global read-aloud book, Fish.  Some students are reading the book A Long Walk to Water, a book based on a true story that narrates the harrowing experience of a boy who has to escape southern Sudan in 1985. Others are reading Inside Out and Back Again, about a girl whose family has to flee their home country of Vietnam in 1975 to escape the violence of the Vietnam War.

In class last week, we discussed the three levels of setting in Fish. This week, students are finding elements of the three levels of setting in their independent books. Students: please reply to this blog post with a comment that compares and contrasts the three levels of setting in Fish with those in your independent book. In your reply, state the name of your book and use text evidence to explain each similarity and difference that you write.

Updates for writing classes

Dear families,

I think I have been confusing some of you lately when I post about my writing classes, which are on two separate tracks. For now, to ease confusion, I’ll put all my writing classes’ updates into one post. I hope this helps!

TAG Writing (4th and 5th grade, 2nd block): students are finishing their first published stories – realistic fiction. These final drafts are going to be hand-written, and I will score them using the attached rubric. Once all students’ Google Drive accounts are set up, a lot more of their writing will be done within their Drive accounts and final drafts will be typed and printed. Today (Friday) is their last day to finish their stories in class. A few students have received extensions to turn their stories in on Monday, but everyone else is turning theirs in today. From here, we are going to move on to writing personal and then persuasive essays.

In spelling, this class has a list of words with prefixes each week. They have in-class warm-ups and homework Monday through Thursday with these words (please see previous post for more information).

Writing (5th grade only, 4th block): students are in the revising process of their first published story, a realistic fiction story. We are revising by getting rid of boring words (like “said” and “mad”) and replacing them with more literary words; stretching out the detail in the most important parts of the story by showing, not telling; and by finding the theme (lesson) in our stories and making them end so that our character learns the lesson we want to teach readers.  We will be finishing and writing final drafts of these stories next week. I will be using the attached rubric to score each student’s story.  These stories will be written by hand, but once students’ Google Drive accounts are set up, more of the entire writing process will be completed on the computers through their accounts, for future units. Our next unit up is essays – personal and persuasive.

In word study, we started this week and will have tests every two weeks. Most students are in a group that has a word study list including three sections: commonly misspelled words, strong fifth grade vocabulary, and word pattern words.  We are working through each part of the list together in class. I will keep the same three sections all year with different words each two weeks.Students should expect to have word study homework on Tuesdays and Thursdays; tests will be every other Friday. Our first test will be on Friday, October 16. Tests will require students not only to spell words correctly, but also to know their meanings and how to use them in sentences. Please email me if you have any questions!

Writing Unit 1 Realistic Fiction I Can statements

Global Read-Aloud: Fish and the importance of setting

Today in my reading class, we had a special guest reader to read chapter 2 of our Global Read-Aloud book, Fish, to us. At the conclusion of the chapter we discussed 3 different levels of setting in the book: micro-setting, meso-setting, and macro-setting. We discussed how people and animals are part of setting, as well as government and geography, and even situations occurring in countries such as drought, famine and war. We realized that setting has a humongous impact on Tiger’s life and has everything to do with how the story will end up going. Attached is an image made by groups of students in class as they identified the elements of each level of setting. We would love your comments!

Levels of Setting in Fish

for TAG Writing class: spelling work and other updates

Hi families,

We are lucky enough to have TAG expert Ruth Brannigan working with us on Mondays to extend our students’ learning. She is currently working with our TAG 4/5 writing class on some common prefixes. Tomorrow I will unveil to students their work with their spelling words, which is attached here for your perusal: SPELLING HOMEWORK MENU. Normally spelling work will be homework only, but for this week it will also be students’ warm-up in class as they become accustomed to it.

Please note that spelling tests will be each Monday in class, followed by students receiving new lists. Your child should have the list for this week with him or her each evening. After tomorrow’s class, please encourage your child to complete their one activity from the menu of activities each night; and if you could help them remember to study on Sunday night, that would be most helpful. Since we do not have school this coming Monday, their first test will be on Tuesday, October 13.

In addition, students are working on finishing their first realistic fiction story. Finalized stories will be due on Thursday (10/8) in class for sharing; the rubric can be perused here: Writing Unit 1 Realistic Fiction I Can statements

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Fish and its connections to the real world

Today we had a discussion about how war affects people living in the countries it involves. We passed the painting with photos of refugees from the current Syrian refugee crisis. Students reflected on how a situation like this might affect the characters in the book, Fish. Below is our Padlet of our thoughts – and the thoughts of Mr. Koski’s class in Kazakhstan, one of our partner classes!