Language+Arts

Week 27

As the students are starting the essay part of the exhibition project after their research, we have talked about sentence variety in our writing. We've practiced changing sentences with quotations into reported speech and vice versa. We have also been working on using correct punctuation with quotations. Students have also been practicing how to quickly gather the information they need for citing sources from the internet or books. In reading we have been focusing on making connections to other texts or to our own experiences and feelings. When reading for research, students have been sorting useful information by these key concepts: perspective, function, reponsibility, connection, form, causation or change.

Featured Writer, Week 21 After finishing the book, students wrote stories to show what they thought would happen next to the Little Prince.

//The Little Prince 2: The threat of the baobabs //

//The little prince finally reached the planet and oh my!!! He could hear the flower whispering, "You're...back, I thought you wouldn't come." "Where are you?" asked the little prince. "Come to the left or to the right, it doesn't make a difference!" // //The little prince chose to go left. And then there she was, in the middle of the roots of a gigantic baobab tree. "Silly child, you left your dear friend in my way. And you can't even uproot me, I don't want to destroy this Asteroid as your complex flower." The little prince thought maybe I'll get an idea after uprooting the other baobab seeds. // //So after uprooting every baobab seed he could find, he decided to take the baobab to a deserted planet! No, the baobab will be lonely so the little prince decided to take him to earth to be with his own kind. // //But the main question is how? Ah I got it, I will ask Mr. Farmer on planet Old McDonald. I'll go there right now. This time there were many ducks migrating. // //I will finally get a chance to go jet-skiing. Mr. Farmer loved all plants (even venus flytraps) so he took one of his huge tree-pots and stepped on his any-weight supporting raft, and when the baobab was there Farmer did some really cool methods and nimbly got the baobab on the tree pot and quickly went to Madagascar in Earth. When the baobab woke up he was so happy he made 15 seeds and the little prince's flower was never quarreling. So they all lived happily ever after. //

Poetry January 24

Students learned the forms of two similar types of poems. They learned that a **haiku** is usually about nature and is made of three lines of 5, 7, then 5 syllables. A similar Japanese poetry form is a **senryu**. It has the same number of lines and syllables, but it is usually about human nature. They each wrote a haiku, a senryu, and then chose one of the forms to represent something they learned during our current unit of inquiry, "Who We Are." In particular, they worked hard on revising all their poems to create a stronger and stronger image in the reader's mind.

Here are examples of their unit poems:



Procedural Writing - Recipes

We have been working on procedural writing and today we wrote what is said to be one fo the oldest recorded recipes called Tiger Nut Sweets. Here are some excerpts from the students writing....

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">//"The food was delicious. It was a very old recipe but a very yummy one. They looked like dead birds and the honey was as sticky as super glue!"//

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">//"It was great! I felt like I was in heaven! Also making it was fun because you dip it in honey and then roll it in ground almonds. The dates looked like dead cockroaches!"//

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">//"It was so much fun to make the food. The recipe was very simple and we ate the Tiger Nuts. It was so yummy so I'm gonna share with my mom and family and I was surprised that it was the oldest recipe! Wow! First it looked like a dead cockroach but after it was okay and my feeling was uuuuu...disgusting but after I ate one it was so good. It was sticky as honey but it was so good!"//

<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 15px;"> <span style="font-family: 'calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 15px; line-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;">

<span style="color: #008080; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;">Oral Language

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">We have been working on full sentences, speaking clearly and questions and some things that help is playing games like 20 questions and Headbands where students ask questions to guess who someone is. They are developing very good questioning skills!



Last updated 24 January 2012