Personal Narratives

This week, we are beginning our writing curriculum. Our first unit of study personal narratives. We had students "turn and talk" to share their worst injury ...

Mr. G's homeroom is sharing personal narratives

Ms. Leom's homeroom is sharing personal narratives

As I load these pictures, I am reminded and impressed with how engaged and involved ALL thes students are in listening and sharing. We can build success on these skills! Let the personal narratives begin!

CWR

One learning activity we will be doing regularly is a CWR, or Constructed Written Response. It means students will be responding by writing a paragraph or an essay. Our first CWR was all about Main Idea and Details.

Ms. Leom slowly developed the steps. First, she encouraged students to come up with a Main Idea. Since she was SURE all her students love to clean and help out around the house (and her own children needed a clear "review" of the expectations), she picked cleaning the kitchen for her main idea, then wrote out the details. Students were encouraged to pick "something you know about". It could be a sport, a hobby, something you enjoy, or a job that you do.






Next, Ms. Leom shared with students the goal of the writing step and the details that needed to be included. The class started together: writing their names on their papers, recording the title of the assignment, then the title of the paragraph. Ms. Leom started with her main idea and changed it into a topic sentence. She gave students two examples they could use:
* This is how I clean the kitchen well.
* Cleaning the kitchen well is important.
Students could also choose their own main idea. She modeled how to indent and explained what it means to indent. When she ran out of room on the first line, she demonstrated how you start the second line to the far left. Students wrote their topic sentence, as Ms. Leom walked around and monitored student progress.

Then, she modeled writing detail sentences, changing details into sentences. The new sentence should start immediately after the previous period. She modeled on the board, and students had work time. Ms. Leom finished her example, then walked around and gave feedback.

the work used to model with Ms. Leom's Homeroom Students

 Before students could finish writing their detail sentences, Ms. Leom explained closure sentences. Beginning writers use "The End" to tell their story or paragraph is finished. As a fourth grader, students are expected to use closure sentences to clearly communicate, their writing is concluded.

Ms. Leom pointed out that her paragraph is like a stoplight (she had to use brown marker for the yellow, because the yellow marker doesn't show up for students to read). When we write paragraphs, the paragraph has three distinct parts: green for topic and introductory sentence, yellow for detail sentences, and red for the closure, ending sentence.

Again, students had work time. Ms. Leom walked around and helped individual students. She wasn't able to see ALL students, but was able to answer questions for students with questions and help those who needed help.

This is a CWR: Constructed Written Response. We will write a written response at the end of every major learning topic. There will be a prewriting and paragraph or essay step.

the work used to model with Mr. Greninger's homeroom students

Heads Up

When students work on an assignment, there is a purpose. We want students to practice the skills, and we look at the success (or struggle) of students to determine what we need to reteach or who we need to target for individual successes.

On our Vocabulary Word Map


Students were struggling with synonyms. If the word they were mapping was "luckier", students were writing "other related words": luck, lucky, luckiest for synonyms.

A synonym is a word that means the same, but is different. For "luckier", the words, fortunate, advantageous, blessed, charmed, favored, promising, successful would all be considered synonyms.

There were many fourth grade students who were struggling. Ms. Leom's idea was one that all students would enjoy, even the students who understood synonyms, so she did the activity with the entire class.

There is an app, a game, called Heads Up. You hold a phone or iPad to your head and the app shows a word. The audience needs to give the player clues to guess the word, but they can't use the word or word parts itself. We played from the animal "card deck".



We only had five minutes to play the game, but it was enough time to make the point and develop the idea of synonyms being DIFFERENT words than the word itself or word parts.

Parent Night

On Monday night, in Dahlager Theater, the Milaca Fourth Grade Teachers, with help from our Elementary Media Specialist, Mrs. Vickers, and Elementary Principal, Mr. Voshell, spoke to parents about fourth grade expectations.

Principal Voshell spoke about the One-to-One iPad initiative in fourth grade

Mrs. Vickers shared about Digital Citizenship and an overview about Internet Safety

Mr. Greninger talked about fourth grade expectations

Mr. Lyon talked about parent involvement

Ms. Hakes-Anderson spoke about homework

Mrs. Arens talked about using ParentVue and our Benchmark Literacy Language Arts Curriculum

Mr. Lundeen talked about fourth grade Math

Not pictured, because the photographer was talking, and families outside of our learning community don't realize Ms. Leom keeps a blog, so a selfie would not be appropriate, Ms. Leom talked about the grading scale. In primary grades, students are graded: ESPN. In fourth grade, students are graded using ABCDF. An ABC in fourth grade is the S of K-3.

We appreciate all the families who were able to attend Parent Night. We KNOW how busy families are and what scheduling arrangements need to be made for you to attend!

Homecoming

While Ms. Leom was home on mom-of-sick-child-duty, Mr. Greninger was on the floor, actively participating in the Homecoming Peppiest.

Thankfully, MRS. Greninger is a friend, and she shared the only photo of our classroom communities of this special day.


Go BIG Red!

Give a Hand

Ms. Leom handed out rectangles to her homeroom class today and asked them to "give a hand" to a classroom project.

Some students needed more than fifteen minutes to create their hands and chose to work on it as "homework".

We are creating our class flag, that will be seen in the hallway, outside our classroom. We will all have a "hand" in making it! Look for our hand-stopping image in a future post. :)

SOTW

SOTW stands for Student of the Week. Every week, we select a new SOTW. Each week, we write a paragraph. Ms. Leom collects our paragraphs and creates a book to share with the SOTW. This year, Ms. Leom decided she needed an example to share with students.

These books have been seen at funerals for former students, graduations, and bookshelves across Milaca. We look forward publishing a copy for each one of this year's SOTW! They are a keepsake for years to come!

Reading in Spelling

Each week, we have their opportunity to read text that includes examples of our weekly spelling pattern. This week our spelling pattern is "comparative suffixes -er and -est".

We pass out the paper. We write our name on the top. Then we write the pattern on the top of the paper. When we write the pattern, it helps us focus on the lesson and our learning goal.

Ms. Leom models the expectations. We read the title. We look for the pattern. She underlines the pattern. We write the pattern above the word.

We also talk about an example that is NOT the pattern. For example, "glider" (like a paper airplane) ends with an "-er", but it isn't a comparative suffix. Ms. Leom tries to find a way to explain it in fourth grade words. She says, that when you can compare, you can use the word itself, the -er ending, and -est ending. Glider doesn't work for the -est ending. We try the word slow. It works. We can use the base word, slow, the -er word, slower, and the -est word, slowest. 

Now we have our goal, and an idea that an "-er" ending doesn't guarantee it is a comparative suffix. Ms. Leom goes over the steps (recorded in on the board). She also goes through the number of examples in each paragraph, so we become familiar with paragraph groupings, and we know our goal. She selects our partners, then we go to work. She walks around as we work. In the beginning she is "just" taking pictures (and listening very carefully to our conversations, monitoring our understanding and coaching us if we need it).

By the fourth day of the week, we are familiar with the pattern. The directions and expectations are clearly modeled and our steps are recorded on the board. Everyone is engaged and actively participating in the activity. Ms. Leom continues to walk around the room and monitor our progress and conversations. She is beginning to prepare for our next lesson as we finish up. This is a Spelling learning activity we will do weekly for the rest of the year. Sometimes we will work with partners, other times independently, and check our learning with a partner. We are encouraged to move about the room. We are fourth graders and ready to Read in Spelling.