October 13

A Work of Heart

We are learning to be wide awake as writers and pay attention to what amazing stories we have to tell from our own lives. Our first unit is writing a personal narrative which is a true story about something that happened in our lives.

Students have been gathering ideas in their notebooks and finally we have chosen the one idea we will nurture and develop over the next short while. We will learn to write a lead, add juicy details, maybe add some dialogue, and learn how to make a conclusion to our story. 

Some ideas students have thought of include:

  • searching for seashells at the beach
  • going on a rollercoaster for the first time
  • visiting Grandma and Grandpa’s boat
  • going bowling and scoring my highest goal ever

There are so many wonderful stories we can tell from our own own lives. We can’t wait to publish them! Stay tuned. 

In the pictures below, we are story-telling. We are using elaboration and asking questions of our partner to tell us more about the event in our life that we are writing about. 

May 19

Poetry Revision

We’ve been writing poetry the last few weeks and are nearing the end of our unit. Our focus has been on free-verse poems which we love because there are NO rules!

We’ve been learning about how to find poems that hide all around us, living wide awake as writers. We learned that we need to pay close attention to our lives and see, feel, touch, smell, and listen closely.

Poems sometimes whisper to us and other times they yell. Poems live in our houses, in our classroom, on the school yard, at the beach, in our cottage, at a restaurant, in a boat…EVERYWHERE!

Here’s some of the strategies we’ve added to our poetry ‘toolbox’:

  • Looking at the world with fresh eyes
  • listening for line breaks
  • using juicy, precise words
  • Using show, don’t tell
  • similes, metaphors
  • alliteration
  • onomatopoeia
  • personification

 

We are creating our poetry anthologies through Google Slides and are handing in our very best 6-8 poems. In class today, our focus was on revising our poems–looking at them again with a partner. We read some advice from famous poets and came to understand that revision is an important piece of the writing process, even for poetry!

May 4

Penpals!

Have you ever had a penpal? It’s fun to communicate with someone and especially fun to get a reply! We’ve been corresponding with another class from Oakville and will continue to the end of this school year. It’s great practice in proper letter writing skills and we always look forward to hearing from our penpal friends.

We will send our next set of letters this week! 

November 27

Punc.tua,tion!? Matter:s

Why do teachers always talk about where to put periods commas quotation marks Mrs Sullivan read us a funny book called Punctuation Takes a Vacation Our class really liked the story and thought it was an interesting idea that punctuation could go on a trip and not be available anymore What a problem that would be for everyone Everyone appreciates how punctuation helps with understanding
Leave a comment down below but do not use any punctuation Lets see if we can
figure out what you are trying to say
Which punctuation mark is your favourite and why is it a mark that is easy to use
May 29

Sharing Our Realistic Fiction Stories

Despite learning from a distance, you have been working so well on completing your stories.I feel like the blog is an easier space to share your work, so that’s why we’re here!

Leave a comment below sharing some positive feedback to your classmates!

By Henry:

[embeddoc url=”https://learningin21.edublogs.org/files/2020/05/HenrysStory-1.pdf” width=”60%” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

 


Lucas’ Story

[embeddoc url=”https://learningin21.edublogs.org/files/2020/05/George-musculars-famous-shakes-2.pdf” width=”60%” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

[embeddoc url=”https://learningin21.edublogs.org/files/2020/05/PaulsStory-1.pdf” width=”60%” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

[embeddoc url=”https://learningin21.edublogs.org/files/2020/05/Annie.docx” width=”60%” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

[embeddoc url=”https://learningin21.edublogs.org/files/2020/05/Chloefinal.pdf” width=”60%” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

Nicole’s Story

[embeddoc url=”https://learningin21.edublogs.org/files/2020/05/NicolesStory.pdf” width=”60%” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

Category: 2019-2020, Writing Workshop | Comments Off on Sharing Our Realistic Fiction Stories
March 13

Celebrating Nonfiction Writing

Our Grade 3/4 class has completed creating their very own nonfiction books. They each chose a topic that was meaningful or interesting to them. Recently, they enjoyed sharing their beautiful nonfiction books…at last! We enjoyed leaving each other compliments and learning about different topics such as:

  • deadliest animals
  • lions
  • dogs
  • cats
  • Saskatchewan Rush
  • Poland
  • Paris
  • and so many more!

Students worked hard to ensure their book included a title page, table of contents, information about their topic, a glossary, and an About the Author page.

We read our books to Miss M’s Grade 2 class who enjoyed hearing all about our topics.

I enjoyed reading every book and the students seemed very proud of their work. I think it will make a nice keepsake for years to come. Well done!

 

Category: 2019-2020, Reading Workshop, Teacher Talk, Writing Workshop | Comments Off on Celebrating Nonfiction Writing
December 4

There, Their, They’re

These 3 little words often cause a lot of confusion with both kids and adults alike. We’ve been working on knowing when to use these different spellings in class. Here’s a short video that provides some great tips on how to remember which form of the word you should be using:

Category: 2019-2020, Teacher Talk, Writing Workshop | Comments Off on There, Their, They’re
November 20

Author’s Celebration

Today, we celebrated our hard work on our narratives. They turned out wonderfully and the students are genuinely proud of them, too.

We spent some time reading each others’ stories and offering written compliments on them, too with sentence starts such as…

  • I really liked how you…
  • I really liked the part where…
  • You did a good job at doing…

Sharing some Doritos and 7Up made us super excited, too.

Congratulations to all of you for a job well done!

June 26

Do You Like Board Games?

A fun way to wrap up a school year is giving students the challenge of creating their own board game. And boy…were these grade 3s up for it!

We wrote down the success criteria together and knew the game had to involve math in some way. The students completed their board games, playing their own game several times and then play each other’s.

The level of detail was incredible! Several groups even crafted their own playing pieces! Wow.

Have a look at their hard work!

Finally, we were pleased to see our poetry anthology arrive to our classroom. The students were delighted to see their published poems in a book that they can keep forever. What a great job everyone did!

Category: Math, Teacher Talk, Writing Workshop | Comments Off on Do You Like Board Games?
June 6

Sharing our Talents with Others

Our published stories were so great that they must be shared with others! We invited Mr. K’s class to come and let us read to them. The Grade 1s enjoyed listening to the stories read aloud. Great job everyone!

Our puppet shows were a hit with our Kindergarten buddies on Tuesday. They were such a great audience and the Grade 3s performed so well. It was so fun to watch all the hard work. Our students not only created their puppets from scratch, they also wrote their own scripts.  Wow! Some of the topics they presented about included protecting the earth, treating others the way you want to be treated, and respect.

Do you own a puppet?