Haikus

We have been writing haikus. So I would like to share one:

Chocolate

Yummy chocolate.

Good cold, good warm and gooey.

I love to eat it.

By David

Personal Narratives

Collection of personal
narratives by John
Sciezka.

Miss Payne has made us write some personal narratives. Not everyone was into it but some of us were into it. Here are some ideas...Max's was about hockey. Some of the ideas were in poems and some of them are on there second one. A lot of people had different ideas like family jokes and a really big injury. A lot of us had a lot of chores - like washing dishes, cleaning our room, taking the trash out, making our beds, and feeding our pets - and that is one of our ideas. Everyone has to do some work on one every day. Some of us have zoomed ahead and have stopped whatever there doing and are deep, deep into there book. Can't wait to read them all. Most of the kids really like writing them and some don't.

by Max and Liam

School: A Small Poem

We read a book of "small" poems by Valerie Worth to get inspiration for our own small poems. I would like to share one:


                                                School
Lots of kids go to school. Some schools are collossal and proud,while some are small and have only a few rooms. But they all are special in their own nice way. Some kids giant, some kids tiny. Some math problems hard,some math problems easy. Some schools with lots of property,some schools with only a midget-size piece of property. They're all different in their own, special, happy, nice way. Some schools with old kids,some schools with young kids. Some schools with well-behaved kids, some schools with bad-behaved kids. Some schools with funny kids,some schools with serious kids. Some schools with nice, encouraging teachers, some schools with strict teachers. Every school is different in their own happy, nice, fun, unique way.


By John from Miss Payne's class

Literature Circles

Today we started research on literature circles.  We talked about FAT questions.  First we read a book called Basket Moon together as a class.  After we read we got into small groups and talked about the questions we wrote on sticky notes.  We noticed that a bad question is a yes or no question or a question that everyone knows the answer.  A good question is one that people can have their own opinion on and it is not that quick to find out.  We sat with knee to knee so we wouldn't have to speak loud and we were whispering our opinion to FAT questions.  We also made sure to look eye to eye.  This afternoon we are excited to begin partner reading for literature circles.    

By: Abbey, Ewing and Sam

Million Dollar Words

Do you know what a million dollar word is?  It is a word that is worth a lot because it is especially descriptive.  While reading this week (in poetry and our independent books) we have been detectives looking for descriptive words and sentences.  Then we discuss why the author chose that vocabulary and how it adds to the story.  One great place to find inspiration for fantastic vocabulary is on paint samples.  Some of the paint colors have very unique names that add to our writing!  The only rule is that if you don't know what the name is or what it means, you can't use it!  We are hoping that by using million dollar words in our own writing, it will make the reader feel like they are a part of our story. 

Wacky Books and Silly Poems

We are about to start our second author study and decided on a very funny poet!  We are happy and excited that our author is Shel Silverstein.  We had a chance to choose our favorite poem that he wrote and we are going to practice fluency before we "perform" for our classmates.  The three books that we chose from were Where the Sidewalk Ends, Falling Up, and The Light in the Attic.  When we read poems we look for descriptive language because word choice in poetry is important to help us understand and laugh.  In class we will be practicing by reading our poems in front of an audience, remembering to speak clearly, pause at the end of lines, hold the book below our face, read fluently and speak with excitement.  One new fact that we learned about Shel Silverstein in our research was that the last book he wrote before he died was Runny Babbit in 1999.

Curious About Columbus

We read an article about Christopher Columbus but after we read we still had some questions that were not answered. We discovered that some of our questions were Quick Finds - questions that you could easily find the answer to on the Internet. Quick Finds had answers that were only about a sentence long. Other questions we had were more Research questions. Research questions took more reading and writing to find the answer. 

The most challenging part of our research was finding just the right book to answer our questions. Sometimes we just had to use the clues in a book to INFER the answer to our question.

Wondering on sticky notes
while we read.