Recently we've started reading our first class novel, Tuck Everlasting. Winnie (who so far has proved to be the main character) met the Tucks: Mae, Jesse, and Miles. They are taking Winnie...well, more like "kidnapped" her because she found out about the everlasting water of life. They are going to the Tuck's house to talk to Mr. Tuck about what to do! But Timmy (the man in the yellow suit) heard everything and he is following! So far we are loving this book by Natalie Babbitt. Well, that's all I have for now. See you soon! Check out some photos below of what we've been doing in class so far.
Hello WPA! So far this year in Ms. Bad's literacy class, our big bad literacy binders are filling up fast! We've been reviewing lots. We had Santa Clause deliver some "clauses!" We also reviewed the types of sentences, and oh, did I mention that THEY'RE learning THEIR homophones in THERE. Haha! Well back to business. Some other grammar things we have reviewed are parts of speech, figurative language, and punctuation. Also we learn morphemes and vocabulary words every week. Recently we've started reading our first class novel, Tuck Everlasting. Winnie (who so far has proved to be the main character) met the Tucks: Mae, Jesse, and Miles. They are taking Winnie...well, more like "kidnapped" her because she found out about the everlasting water of life. They are going to the Tuck's house to talk to Mr. Tuck about what to do! But Timmy (the man in the yellow suit) heard everything and he is following! So far we are loving this book by Natalie Babbitt. Well, that's all I have for now. See you soon! Check out some photos below of what we've been doing in class so far.
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Lately in class we have been reading a new novel. It is so entertaining! Give it up for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry! Personally, I think that writing it out takes a long time. So I'm going to shorten it to ROTHMC. ROTHMC is a real page turner and it seems like Ms. Bad makes us stop at the worse possible moments. Talk about cliffhangers. We listen to a CD so we can hear the Southern dialect correctly from an expert. While we read, we have different purposes for reading. For some chapters, we had to make inferences about characters and the historical time period. We also focused on the Southern dialect and determining what some examples of slang meant in the story. We talked about character qualities for another chapter and also practiced using metacognition to monitor our comprehension. If you didn't understand that last part, then it means to think about your thinking. Which to me seems really confusing because if you're thinking about your thinking, can't you think about your thinking about your thinking? Never mind. What has been your favorite part of the book? What do you think will happen in the end?
Currently we have been reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and boy it is good, but it's not that easy! We have had to prepare for this book for a long time by reading and researching about the time period. First came learning about equality, racism, and segregation. Next learning and prejudices and bias. Then we had to learn the historical context of the book and the background of the author. Finally, we started reading the book! It has a Southern dialect so we are listening to a person read it to us and boy is it nice. If we weren't listening to a person who knows how to speak with a Southern dialect we would have to try to pronounce something like, "Hush now, Little Man or the wolf get you" or "She'd've whipped me." We are just kids, how are we supposed to deal with 3 words put into one?! It's too hard for our ginormous brains to comprehend. How do you guys like Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry so far? Do you think it should be banned like it is in some school districts? ''Cause I sure don't. No way, cousin dude person! See, even in writing I can't do the Southern dialect. As our final project after reading The Giver, we worked in small groups to create our own Utopias! Using ideas from the novel and discussions in class, we created a Utopian society complete with its own government, laws, and jobs. It was very hard to make a perfect society, but we think we succeeded! Check out the maps of the Utopias we created below!
The last few weeks we have been learning about the 3 branches of government. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start this over. Hey guys, remember me? Of course you do because who can forget someone as annoying as Joshua Tibbitts (NOTE FROM MS. BAD = Joshua is amazing, not annoying!). Well as you now know we have been learning about the 3 branches of government and we're doing great! We're read about each branch, made posters, wrote a LONG informative essay (that's what we're typing right now!), had a Socratic Seminar (where we discuss some tough questions as a group), had long talks with Mrs. Swan about how the government works today, and also made HUGE webs to organize information about the branches. So parents, if you ask your kids about this, you'll find yourself stuck in a 30 minute discussion. We also just finished The Giver! Parents, please let us see the movie. Please! I don't think any of us liked the ending, I don't know why. It's weird. The two books we have read as a class have endings we didn't really like. Even if we didn't like the ending we sure liked the books (even though it felt impossible to spoil something...). Did you guys like the book? Do you want to watch the movie? If so, beg your parents 24/7 and they will most likely not let you watch the movie, but it will be fun to try. What book do you want to read next? Hey guys, it's me again. The one and only Joshua Tibbitts! Before winter break, we presented family traditions after a lot of hard work. Our whole class did a great job, to name a few. It was so much fun and people, you should go show your prents because they were impressive.
These presentations were based off an interview of a family member about a family tradition which we got to present about. This was fun, but in the book The Giver, I don't think they could do this because you are assigned a family unit and everyone is pretty much the same. The Giver is a book about a utopia that turns into a dystopia. The author is Lois Lowry. We all really like it. A couple people have already read it so it takes all their will power not to spoil it. Hint Hint, Owen and Joshua and Eliza O., cough cough. Everyone is going to like the ending, unlike Tuck Everlasting. How Jonas cares more about...OOPS! I almost spoiled the whole book! Well, different topic: the Spelling Bee is coming up so yay! Get studying! Have fun and try not to freeze. What do you like most about the family tradition project? This week we will start reading The Giver by Lois Lowry. There are some topics in this dystopia novel that are going to be challenging, but we can handle it. We also started book clubs. This means that once a week for 8 weeks our reading group gets together to discuss the assigned portion we are supposed to read. We also have to do a job that helps us practice reading strategies. The books we are reading are all class novels, like the Mysterious Benedict Society, The Westing Game, Gregor the Overlander, and Walk Two Moons. We are all great readers so we will get through these books fast. We will be reading one book a team so get ready to read! What book club are you in? Did you get the one you wanted? What are you most excited about for book club? This week we finished Tuck Everlasting and things got a bit chaotic. Winnie dies! She doesn't drink the spring water to become immortal. I'm pretty sure we wasted 25 minutes of literacy screaming. And we thought the lunchroom was bad. Some kids were even stressing under a tissue (cough, Ethan and Joshua, cough, cough!). Parents, if your kids seem a little happy, read them Tuck Everlasting so they won't be happy anymore. Just kidding, Tuck Everlasting is a great book! It has really good figurative language. How did you like the ending? Now we had to get down to business. The movie. It was great! No just kidding, it was the worst movie ever. I don't think the producers even read the book, it was that bad. It's called "Hollywood" people! You can count on them to turn this almost perfect children's book into a romance, love, and drama story that is probably not good for a four year old. What did you think of the movie? Now to cheer us up, Ms. Bad let us do some fun Tuck Everlasting projects. We tried to get 45 points at most from finishing different types of projects. These included making a skit about a scene, making a new book jacket, making a spring water advertisement poster, and more. After Ms. Bad checked our work, we hung up the projects so we can all enjoy them. What projects did you do? After we finished all this, we wrote an essay on whether or not eternal life was a blessing or a curse. What did you think it was? Hello! Parents, the agenda for this week is...yes, I know what agenda means. Okay, never mind. Parents, if you have received a heart warming letter from your child the read on. If you haven't, it'll be there soon. This week we have learned about ethos, pathos, and logos and have used our new found skills in a persuasive letter. Our letter was meant to persuade the reader (our parents) to buy us something we really want. How we did this was we made the reader trust us using ethos, then we made the reader feel emotion using pathos. Then we used actual facts that we looked up which are logos. So next time you're filling out a job application, use ethos, pathos, and logos. It will surprise you how much your life will change. Okay, I'm done. See you next time! Hello parents, me again. I know you're probably annoyed that I'm doing your thing: blogging. Well, I'm taking a page out of your book so boo hoo, go cry yourself a river if it makes you feel better. But hey, you get to drive. I know you can argue about if it's a good or bad thing! I agree I got myself stuck in a pickle by saying that...
Okay, all eyes on the screen (we all do it enough anyway). This week we have been learning about figurative language in writing and that's an understatement. It's been drilled into our heads. Okay, calm down, not like that. If you're interested in metaphors, similes, personification, idioms, hyperboles, understatements, alliterations, and onomatopoeias, just ask your child (which will also include a full lecture if you use figurative language wrong!). I was going to say something else, but it slipped my mind. I talk too much. I really do need to put my foot in my mouth. Please don't give me the cold shoulder. This boy will be back in a second with the next blog! From Ms. Bad: can you find all the examples of figurative language in Josh's blog post? Write them below in the comments! |
AuthorLiteracy Linguist: Megan Archives
May 2018
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