Decimals & Author's Writing Craft

Small groups gathered to share their narrative final copy.  While listening to the story group members filled out a Readers' Comments sheet writing what they liked about the story.

I read Owl Moon by Jane Yolen which was our mentor text for sentence fluency.  Students copied the chart into their Reader's Notebooks and filled it out while listening to the story on the carpet.

In Math Workshop students learned to add and subtract decimals through group rotations: completing math journal pages and reinforcement sheets or challenge activities, playing Number Top-It Decimals, and working with the teacher at the carpet.

And for a special end of the day treat, Alex brought in granola bars from the Winn-Dixie grocery store she visited while in Florida.  This was especially exciting for her reading group that just finished reading Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo.

Sentence Fluency

In Writer's Workshop students learned about sentence fluency.  They learned that good writers vary the way each sentence begins and write a variety of long and short sentences. 

To begin the lesson students were instructed to write at least two paragraphs on the topic of their choice.  

Next we compared a paragraph written by a fourth grader to the beginning of Owl Moon by Jane Yolen.  First volunteers came up to the Smart Board to highlight the beginning word of each sentence.  Students noticed that the fourth grade writer began many sentences the same way, while Jane Yolen did not start any of her sentences in the first paragraph with the same word.  Students then went through their writing and highlighted the first word of each of their sentences.

Then using the same two model paragraphs volunteers came back to the Smart Board to count the number of words in each sentence.  This caused them to notice that the fourth grade writer wrote sentences that were pretty much the same length, while Jane Yolen wrote long and short sentences.  Students then went through their writing and counted the number of words per sentence. 

Next they filled out a chart to document how they began each sentence and how many words were in each sentence.  Finally they reflected on what they learned about their own sentence fluency.