I hope you're having a great weekend. It's rainy and yucky outside, so I figured I'd get ahead on some work and catch up on grading.
This week in...
Reading: We will delve into a new genre, Historical Fiction. This is my personal favorite. I love the realistic stories authors write while intertwining true historical facts or people. We will begin with our usual activity, which is a "book flood." Students will pore over many examples as they read and discover what historical fiction is all about. We will come up with a working definition together this week. We will stay with this genre for a few weeks, as students will begin literature circle groups. In small groups they will be able to read historical fiction novels and really dig deep to discover the author's purpose and use of writing techniques. We are reviewing the reading benchmarks the students recently took to see what types of questions were missed. In the event that a student did not meet the district's passing rate, I am meeting with him/her individually to rework some of the questions. The scores will be shared soon on a conference form that will be sent home.
Writing: Students are finishing up their final drafts of a piece about what they want to do in the future. I'm enjoying reading about all the dreams of NFL playing, engineering, medicine, and music. Your kiddos are very creative. We will begin a new piece this week and do some work in writing stations. The stations will allow students to practice rearranging sentence parts to form complex sentences with and without commas depending on where the dependent clause is. In addition, students will work on identifying where quotation marks and commas belong in dialogue. Another station will allow students to practice reflective writing after reading a short biography. I will meet with small groups twice this week at different points in their writing.
Social Studies: We are still studying the time of colonization in Texas, which is still under Mexican rule. The first battle in the revolution has occurred. It was the Battle of Gonazles in Oct. of 1835 when the Mexican government attempted to reclaim a cannon that had been given to the town earlier to protect themselves from Native Americans. Now that Mexico feels Texas may be becoming too powerful, they fear uprising and try to get the cannon back. This is the first Texas victory in the revolution. This week the students will learn a little more about the empresarios who built and colonized Texas during that time period.
That's it for now. Thank you for all you do to support the kids at home and me at school. I couldn't do it all without you.