Newsletter

Hi, Jan. 18, 2015

Come to our Walk to Read Event on Monday, Jan. 19 at 2:00 at Forest Creek Elementary! We will meet in the library for a short presentation about Libraries of Love in Uganda, Africa. Then we will go outside with a hardback book to donate. We will walk a few laps, stop and read our books together, then walk a few more laps. Monetary donations will also be accepted. So far, we over 300 books and $414 has been donated! Come and help us help the children in Africa.

Talent Show is on Thursday, January 22 at 6:30 pm. It will be a wonderful show! Come and enjoy!

We will have an Author Visit on Friday. Kate Klise will be at Forest Creek on Friday to do writing workshops with our fourth graders. We are very excited to meet her and learn about her techniques for writing.

In reading this week, we learned more about traditional literature and learned a bit about the Civil Rights Movement. We read a play called The Sticky Coyote about a trickster and a tall tale called Stormalong. We practiced fluency and reading with expression using a tale of King Midas and the Golden Touch. The story elements (setting, plot, conflict, rising action, climax, resolution, and theme, characters-antagonist and protagonist) were discussed in many different books this week. We also read an article about Brown vs. Board of Education and the book, My Brother Martin, which is about Dr. Martin Luther King. We read The Story of Ruby Bridges, which is about school desegregation. We started new literature circles with novels that deal with civil rights issues and will be reading them, writing about them, and discussing them in groups.

In writing, we used mentor texts (Owl Moon and Papa, Who Woke Up Tired in the Dark) to discuss word choice, character changes, and setting. We noticed the effectiveness of slowing down the most important part of the story by adding specific details. Then we practiced in our own personal narrative entries. We will work hard to draft, conference, revise, edit, and publish this week.

In social studies, we role played life in a mission. I was the Spanish priest who ran the mission and the students were the Native Americans. They were able to experience how challenging it could have been to work in the field (picking beans off the floor), learn the Spanish language (writing Spanish words repeatedly), sleep in the dormitory (lying on the floor), make tools (drawing farm and cooking tools), and convert to Catholicism (listening to Gregorian chants on the computer). We had some interesting discussions after the activity about the viewpoints of the Native Americans and how it could have been hard for some to live in the missions, however, the missions helped others to survive. We will learn about the Mexican Revolution and the Austins in Texas this week.

Dates to Remember:

Monday, January 19, 2015-MLK Day No School-Walk to Read Event at 2:00 at FCE
Tuesday, January 20, 2015-Tutorials at 2:45-3:45, Reading logs due
Wednesday, January 21, 2015-Summary and Response due
Thursday, January 22, 2015-Writing Club from 2:45-3:45, Talent Show at 6:30 pm
Friday, January 23, 2015-Summary and Response due, Vocabulary test, Spelling test

Hope you had a great weekend and look forward to seeing you at Walk to Read at 2:00 pm!

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,
Pam