2nd Grade:Almost everybody had papers to share today and I loved listening to them all. Please remember to practice reading your final copy before you come to class. We are officially down to 9 weeks as a second grader, so please try and finish the year strong! Writing is a skill that builds upon itself. These are the hard, foundation building years, but it is worth it! Due Next Week: Please complete Lesson 9 and return with 2 paragraphs about Timid Sheep and Sheepdogs. At home: Please read all of lesson 9. Complete the parts of speech word sort that was glued into their blue spirals. , We folded "Cootie Catchers" to practice our parts of speech. Each child has their own! 3-5th Grade:I think the paper airplanes must have been a success because a lot of the kids could name multiple prepositions and prepositional phrases! Good job, moms! Today in class we reviewed our prepositions, made a foldable "cootie catcher" to review different dress ups, parts of speech, and decorations, and then created a large 3fold piece of paper. This large sheet of white paper is for their Unit 6 paper today. They are to read Lesson 21, create 1 outline for each source text (which is on page 184), then form a topic sentence, fuse the 2 outlines together and then write 1 paragraph! I gave the analogy of a grocery list. When you make a grocery list you write: eggs , milk, bread, yogurt, fruit etc. We don't usually list 20 green bananas, 2 large containers of greek yogurt, one whole wheat bread etc..... I told the class when they are sorting through source texts to write a report, think of a grocery list. Only write down the key facts that will trigger a note to yourself about information. Therefore, only make notes about things that are informative, important, or relevant. This is really hard for kids to filter or sift through information. Please carefully read through all of Lesson 21. If you're student has state testing for ELA (English Language Arts) this is a skill that is required and used on the formal test. Also, it was really neat to see and hear the kids make these cootie catchers! Hilarious to hear how excited some of the boys were about it! It's a great way to build those fine motor skills and practice recalling different parts of speech! It would be fun to have them do it around the dinner table to quiz old siblings and their parents! Due Next Week: 1 final copy paragraph from Lesson 21. We completed Source #1 KWO, but they are to complete source#2 KWO, then form a topic sentence of their own, and then fuse their outlines together into 1 outline in the middle of their large paper. Remember ,not every detail from each outline needs to be included in their fused outline. ONLY fuse information through the funnel/filter of their topic sentence. 2nd Grade:I really enjoyed hearing from almost everybody today and their reports about pigs! Today we read about sheep. One thing I'm noticing is a lot of students are struggling to name different parts of speech, specifically nouns/adjectives and verbs/adverbs. We played a modified/impromptu game of adverb "musical chairs." However, there was no music or chairs....hmmm maybe I should say it was just an impromptu adverb game. Anyway, the takeaway is that kids need to be able to identify and brainstorm different nouns/adjectives and verbs/adverbs in a "popcorn" style pace. Due Next Week: 2 paragraphs from Lesson 8 about sheep 3-5th Grade:It was a fun and full day in IEW. I had prepared a lot of material for the class. I had hoped to cover a lot more. Time flew by. Hopefully the students both learned and played today! Anyone pick up on what I just did in the previous paragraph! That is an unscripted example of past tense + past perfect details + past tense clincher. I should include 3 pics of our day and write a paragraph for each one....hmmm Anyway today we really enjoyed listening to each student's event description from Lesson 19. We are in lesson 20 this week. Please work through each page of the lesson, especially those brainstorming pages! We reviewed past perfect (the past of past tense), and then I introduced 2 new sentence openers. A lot of students naturally use both of these sentence openers. However, starting this week the challenge is to purposefully incorporate a variety of sentence openers! We reviewed -ly adverb starts and then had fun with prepositions. I'm attaching a preposition video from Youtube for practice. Students are to fly their airplanes around the house and write a prepositional phrase on the plane. Shoutout to Mrs. Curtis for the sleek paper airplane design! Where did your airplane fly? -over the piano -under the chair -across the room -into the doorway -behind my head Due Next Week: Final, polished copy of 3 paragraph event description from Lesson 20 Study your prepositions! Memorize your vocab. Vary your sentences ! *Remember, every preposition needs an object of the preposition. Have your student ask themselves " IN what?" The what will be the object of the preposition. The plane flew above.... "above what?" "Above my head." 2nd Grade:Our class is catching on quickly to the report writing from our PALS book. Thank you to so many who have brought their book and papers each week! This week we learned about pigs. We completed one KWO together and I set them up to start the 2nd one. Have a great week together and I'll see you next Tuesday for week 20! Due Next Week: Please bring 2 paragraphs: 1 about Pigs and 1 about Pet Pigs! Be prepared: This week is a challenging lesson. Unit 5 can be difficult for some literal students. It can also seem to be very overwhelming to produce 3 paragraphs in 1 week. I would encourage you to thoroughly read through the lesson on page 169-171. This is considered EVENT DESCRIPTION- not exactly story writing. Its as if they are reporters or investigators reporting on these 3 images and fleshing out the details. The students highlighted/outlined a series of questions to ask themselves. This is where literally, type A students often struggle. Students DO NOT need to answer every question. These questions generate ideas. A lot of us grew up "brainstorming" or "web mapping" our ideas. This process of drawing out information is THINKING. All the students will return with slightly or very different papers. I would highly recommend listening to the podcast from IEW about Unit 5. It is a 2 part series, and I have listened to them multiple times. (In case my hyperlink didn't work above, here it is also) iew.com/help-support/podcast/episode-73b-writing-pictures-structure-and-style-unit-5-part-2 Due Next Week: 3 paragraphs from Lesson 19. Please read the entire lesson! This is an EXAMPLE of the first pic in the lesson from 3rd grade. Interestingly, they wanted to make our character the youngest & smallest (obviously a trend in the 3rd grade class of being the younger sibling) and they wanted him to be in a contest to prove his skills and talents. On the left of the board I wrote down that the details after the Central Fact (aka topic sentence) are derived from the questions the student chooses to answer. Just a little grammar plug. In Unit 5 their Central Fact is past tense. If they give information/details before the past tense event, then it needs to be in past perfect (usage of has/had/have. For example: I woke up late. I had been studying all night. When I finally heard the loud beeping, I stumbled out of bed. I brushed my teeth quickly and barely combed my hair. Thankfully there was little morning traffic. I rushed into class and was pleasantly surprised to find my room completely set up! Although I woke up late, my morning was not ruined. The above paragraph I literally just made up while typing this. I tried to come up with an example of past tense in the central fact and in the clincher. Details before my event are in the past perfect.. Details about my past tense event are in the past tense. Hopefully that makes sense! I'm also attaching a wonderfully written Unit 5 example. Please note how the central fact and clincher still reflect each other in the past tense!
It was great to hear from so many kids today! We were a really small class due to illnesses. Praying for health for so many families! Please read the complete lesson from lesson 6 and bring back 2 paragraphs: one on Jersey Cows and one on How Cows Eat. One thing I have noticed is a lot of the class still seems hesitant about identifying nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. Please make sure and work on these parts of speech so they be better prepared to dress up their writing in IEW. Due next week: 2 separate paragraphs from Lesson 6. * 3-5 Grade: Today your student may come home a little frazzled or confused. Please read these notes carefully and then let me know if you have any questions. Please read lesson 18 in the IEW book. We are combining lessons 15 & 16 (the paragraphs about Athens & Sparta), which were returned to your student today), and we are formulating a multi paragraph report about the places in Ancient Greece. If your student has completed both lesson 15 & 16, then all they need to write is 4 new sentences. A lot of kids were confused when I mentioned writing only 4 sentences. A lot of them thought they had to write an entire separate paragraph. They need to write an introductory sentence that introduces their ENTIRE report. We brainstormed A LOT. Some students were quick and wrote down a bunch of ideas. Here are two examples from classmates today: Ancient Greece is region famous for its remarkable cities. Ancient Greece was the location of many powerful cities. The next sentence they need to add is the TRANSITIONAL sentence/phrase/word to begin their paragraph about Athens. Here are some of the examples we brainstormed in class: For example, Athens was one of two renowned cities in Ancient Greece. Athens was one of the powerful cities in Ancient Greece. Now...here's the tricky part. After these 2 sentences are formulated, now you take your student's final copy (that they were given back in case they needed it or in case it wasn't saved on the computer) and you COPY/PASTE here. You are essentially adding the introductory topic sentence, transitional phrase/sentence to their final copy of Athens. Then, you write a transitional sentence for Sparta. Here's what we brainstormed in class: Another famous city-state in Ancient Greece was Sparta. Sparta is the other famous and powerful city in Ancient Greece. Next, you insert your child's final copy of their Sparta paragraph here. Now, you have 2 paragraphs. At the end of the Sparta paragraph write one closing clincher that will reflect 2-3 words from your introductory sentence in the very beginning. I'm attaching the chart from class. If your child has saved copies on the computer of their Athens & Sparta paragraphs then this should be quite easy and quick to complete. Next week: Please return their final copies from lesson 15 (Athens) & Lesson 16 (Sparta) AND their lesson 18 - their combined report. *Remember the closing clincher is after the last sentence of the Sparta paragraph. It is NOT it's own paragraph yet...
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Kelli HeacockThe Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) equips teachers and teaching parents with methods and materials which will aid them in training their students to become confident and competent communicators and thinkers. Archives
May 2017
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