More Mysteries & Frog Habitats

In Reader's Workshop, students independently practiced reading another short mystery story and filling out a Detective Case Report.

In Science, students gathered with their group to brainstorm what the Dwarf African Frog will need to survive in our classroom.

Next, they set up the habitat.  Now they are anxiously anticipating the frogs arrival.  (Notice I wrote THEY and not WE ...  ;).

Guess the Genre!

 We are so excited to be diving into our mystery reading unit.  To begin the unit, the class was given a list of scrambled words.  They all did their best unscrambling as many as possible.  After they saw a pattern of words such as clue, detective, and crime they figured it out!  We also discussed each mystery vocabulary word since some were new such as red herring and alibi. 

Next we read a short mystery story and identified all the key ingredients that make up a mystery.

Finally we filled in a Detective Case Report and went over the answers.

Welcome back to Justin!  We all enjoyed seeing some of his vacation pictures.

Especially this one!

Writing Ordinary Moments in Extraordinary Ways

Last week in Writer's Workshop students learned how to write an ordinary event in an interesting way.  First they created a list of normal events that occur just about each day (playing at recess, riding on the school bus, getting ready in the morning, getting ready to go to sleep).  Next we reviewed the mentor text Come On, Rain!  to see how Karen Hesse was able to write a beautiful story about waiting for rain.  Some of the examples were: including dialogue, figurative language, and sensory images. Using plenty of reference materials in their writing resource section of their binder, students set off to turn some ordinary moments into extraordinary events.

Lunch Boxes...

Have been found!  Unfortunately as students were packing up they noticed our lunch basket was missing.  I apologize for the inconvience, but the basket was found once students were dismissed.  Happy New Year!