November 10

I realized I did not post last week and I apologize. It completely slipped my mind!

This week in Reading class we are working on a few different skills.

We are going to review 1st and 3rd person Narrators. We are going to be looking for text evidence to determine 1st or 3rd person narrator. A hint I tell my students is to look at the pronouns. Ex: I, we, he, she, them... to tell whose writing and/or telling the story. This will help lead us into discussing the differences between a biography and an autobiography.

Our story this week is Author: A True Story which is an autobiography. We have six vocabulary words this week: proper, talented, useful, single, excitement and acceptance. You can play a game with the vocabulary words here: Vocabulary Game 

We will also be discussing POETRY! We will begin a class tree map focusing on the different types of poetry: Narrative, Lyrical, Humorous and Free Verse.
Narrative Poem: Tells a story. Remember Narrative is similar to Narrator and a Narrator tells a story.
Lyrical Poem: Triggers your feelings. Poem is similar to song lyrics.
Humorous Poem: Funny poem. Rhyme and Repetition are common in humorous poems.
Free Verse Poem: Doesn't follow any poetry rules. Stanzas, lines, repetition and rhyme.

The spelling list this week will be a review of all the patterns we have had from week 7-11. The list will be on spelling city by tomorrow afternoon.

Happy Sunday!
Don't forget we have a canned food drive all this week!
Tomorrow is Macaroni Monday.

Mrs. Phillips

Istation at Home

I realized after speaking with a parent today that some of you guys did not know that you could download the reading program that we use at school at home. Please in no way are you required by anyway to download and use the program. I just want you guys to have access to it and know that it is available in case you would like to. The kids enjoy it too!

All you need to do is google Istation. Click on the Download Istation link and follow the directions. I sent out an email with a step by step, but I cant attach the document on here sorry guys. 

Let me know if this helps, if its something you are going to try, if you need anything more from me. I will help in anyway I can !!  You can leave a comment on my blog too! If you want.

Mrs. Phillips

Red Ribbon Week

Luna Elementary pledges to be drug free!  Red Ribbon Week is a week of drug and alcohol awareness that incorporates activities that promotes a drug-free lifestyle. Wearing a red ribbon signifies a unified effort to support a drug free environment.  Join us the 27th-31st as we dressed to express our drug free spirit!

Monday: Mix and Match clothes

Tuesday: Dress Hawaiian

Wednesday: College Shirts

Thursday: Luna Spirit shirt/team jersey/uniform

Friday: Jeans and Red shirt 

October 26

In reading this week we are going to be working on Character Analysis. We will be creating a "FAST" foldable to help us look deeper into our characters.

F: Feelings

A: Actions

S: Says

T: Thinks

We will be revisiting some of the characters from our previous stories we have read in class. We will be discussing characters from: The First Day Jitters, Amazing Grace, Wolf!, My Very Own Room and Stellaluna.

We have five vocabulary words this week. You can play a matching game here: Vocab Matching 

This week in spelling we are working on diagraphs. Digraphs are a pair of letters representing a single speech sound, as ea in meat or th in path. You can find the spelling list and play games with the words at SpellingCity Unit 2 Week 10 and you can play some other fun games on our online textbook here Digraph/Phonics Game and here Spelling Game Don't forget about the sentences.

Happy almost Halloween,

Mrs. Phillips

October 20

Sorry for the day late post.. We were watching the Cowboys :) woohooo

This week in reading class we are reading the story Home Grown Butterflies and focusing on the skill of drawing conclusions. We had a class discussion on how the words drawing conclusions has nothing to do with drawing in art. Our class discussed that when you draw a conclusion you look at all the clues in the story, the context clues, and come up with your conclusion, guess and/or prediction based on those clues.

We did a short animation video about a family walking through a parking lot... going somewhere....we then listened for some context clues..
1. wanting to see the elephants
2. wanting to see the tigers
3. wanting to see the clowns
4. Hurry to get to their seats

We took those clues and drew a conclusions that they were going to a circus... circus was never directly stated in the story.

Our spelling words this week are three letter blends Week 9. Spelling City Practice and dont forget the sentences. There are three this week.

October 13

This week in reading we are working in the fun, but sometimes confusing genre of Historical Fiction. Students usually are quick to identify the passage as fiction, but the historical part throws them for a loop. This is a great time to discuss that historical fiction is a made up story that is set in a special time in history.

This week we will be reading Boom Town that is about a young girl and her family starting a pie business in a miner town in California during the Gold Rush. The Gold Rush really happened, but Amanda's pie business did not. We will also be focusing on the skill this week and it is sequencing story events.

In spelling this week we will be working with words with silent letters. My son and I call them Ninja words.(He's 7) Obviously this is not the correct term, but it helps him remember how sneaky these letters are. Here is the link to the spelling words Week 8 Silent Letters.. and don't forget about the sentences.

Mrs. Phillips

Go Cowboys!! woohoo

October 7

We are going to continue with our story My Very Own Room from last week and use our new summary skill to summarize it into a thinking map using our acronym BME. Our vocabulary words are going to remain the same also.

I will also be introducing our first poetry selection, discussing the basics of poetry beginning with stanzas and lines.

Last week we took our first CA- Curriculum Assessment given out by the district. This was a reading passage followed by ten multiple choice questions. We are going to be going over this in class. This will allow my students to see their mistakes in a non threatening way. The curriculum assessments are not a grade that  goes into the gradebook, but a tool to see who needs help and in what area. We will be correcting our assessments in class as a whole group. I do this whole group so that we can walk through our reading steps together and I let the students direct the correcting. They will be able to come up and teach the class how they found the answer.

Our spelling this week will focus on the Long e sound. Check out the spelling list here and play some games. Don't forget about the spelling sentences. Spelling City Week 7

I hope everyone had a great day off!! 

Mrs. Phillips