This week we continued our focus on character traits with an emphasis on using text evidence to support our thinking. In addition to describing ourselves and friendly faces of Memorial Park, students recorded traits of characters they are reading about in Book Club-- Blackbeard, Jane Goodall, Annie Oakley, Mother Theresa, and Ichiro Suzuki--to name a few.
We are also working on finding the main idea of a story, passage, or chapter. We think of the main idea as the umbrella--the big idea. The raindrops beneath the umbrella are the details. We can also think about main idea as a table, where the details serve as the legs to support the main idea.
Topic 4 connected addition and multiplication. We discovered that 5 + 5 + 5 can also be written as 3 groups of 5, or 3 x 5. We got practice drawing arrays, or equal rows and columns. Many students wrote multiplication stories that had a Halloween twist! Students will take timed quizzes for each multiplication table. It's important that they begin to study their facts nightly as future topics rely heavily on mastery of multiplication facts.
In Writer's Workshop, before publishing, students are using checklists to edit and revise their personal narratives. We think of the acronym COPS as we edit for capitals, order and organization, punctuation, and spelling. When we revise, we think ARMS, or add, remove, move, or substitute words or phrases. Many writers chose to add dialogue to their narratives. We learned where quotation marks are used when characters are speaking.
In Spelling, we're sorting words by their rule or pattern and many got a chance to practice typing their words on keyboards and iPads!
