Twenty-First Day of School

Today was a busy day. We worked on our Unit Project in the  morning. For Writing we revised to add interesting words which may help to give our writing more style.

We listened to a non-fiction article called Munch Crunch about the eating habits of various animals and examined it for structure. We concluded that it was categorized information. We learned (among other things) that large plant eaters will often eat for most of the day whereas large meat eaters may only eat every 4 days.

In Math, we built physical models for the numbers 8 & 9. On Monday (time allowing), we will record our results and make a report which will be posted in class.

In Science, we learned about the term classify. We sorted objects by common properties and tried to guess other's sorting property or rule.

Some suggestions about story telling at home:

• When a child starts a story, listen for the who, when, and where of the beginning (set/introduction).
• Listen for an action which follows the beginning.
• Listen for a transition (then, later, suddenly) to what happens next (CCSS WS.1.3).
• If you feel motivated, have your child dictate the story to you as you print in black ink.
• Revise the story in blue ink adding details for completeness and interest.
• Edit the story in red as a final practice step.

Twentieth Day of School

Today we learned to add dialogue to our stories to add interest.

We examined 5 different non-fiction pieces for structure. We learned that two ways to structure a non-fiction piece is by time (timeline) and by categorizing subtopics.

You will find a Scholastic News article in your child's work about scientists which uses categorization for its structure. Examining an author's structure helps to improve comprehension.