Dear families,

it has been a while since my last post – apologies for the long radio silence!

In our 4th/5th grade TAG Writing class, we finished up realistic fiction stories that we wrote by hand just in time to receive our shiny new Chromebooks! Now, almost everything that we are doing in class is online through Google Classroom and the students’ Google Drive accounts. I encourage you to ask your child to show you their Drive account and our class’s Google Classroom page; that is where all of our work is!

We have begun a new writing unit on personal essays. I have challenged the students to create a statement that is a guiding philosophy for their lives, inspired by the structure of the “This I Believe” essay series, which airs on All Things Considered on NPR. I hope you will ask your child to share his/her This I Believe statement with you and talk about the basis of this belief.  Students are drafting their essays with mini-stories and examples to illustrate their belief, and they are practicing using the literary tools of narrative authors such as varied sentence lengths and figurative language.

In the last two weeks, we have moved to a new unit in our spelling program. Instead of just studying how to spell the words on their lists, the students have received new packets of words with Greek and Latin roots organized thematically that they are learning the meanings of, and learning how to use. Our tests are on Mondays when Ms. Brannigan is with us; we are taking a break from this until we return from Thanksgiving break though, so our next test won’t be until Monday, December 7.

Ms. Brannigan has been working with the students to introduce them to Latin so they can start to make connections between Latin and English words. Students are even learning how to use analogies to analyze word meanings and connections.

Presently, we are in the midst of NaNoWriMo, but I know that few students have really had the chance to work on the challenge. I am offering my support one day a week in class, but our time is unfortunately quite limited for it. I hope to have our own novel writing challenge like this again in class later this year, so if your child didn’t get the chance to participate this time, there may be another opportunity later on this year. Stay tuned!

Thanks for all your support and as always, please don’t hesitate to email me if you have any questions.