Week 18 Announcements (December 15-18)

Week 18 Announcements (December 15-19)

Parents,

This is the last week before Winter Break! While students are looking forward to the break, I’ve encouraged them to keep working hard for four more days. Because report card grades are due on Wednesday, I will finalize most grades on Monday. With that in mind, there will be No Reading Log Homework. Please make sure they are still reading every day. However, we will still have a sight word quiz on Thursday, so students will still be given sight words for the week.

Reading

Last week we talked about Poetry and compared the differences between freeverse and lyrical styles of poems. Make sure your students can tell you the difference between the two! We will come back to poetry after Winter Break, but it is important for students to read poetry and understand how the poet feels or why they are using the writing strategies that he or she is using. This week, as we introduce Drama, students will have an opportunity to get into student groups and practice acting as characters in a play. Towards the end of the week, after students are tested on parts of Drama, they will have the opportunity to perform for their fellow students in something we like to call Reader’s Theatre.

Writing

Last week, due to testing, a lot of our Writing Block was limited to only a few minutes per day. This week, with four full days, we will have a chance to re-visit Expository writing. We will review the differences between Expository and Narrative writing as well as how Expository is organized. We will talk about brainstorming strategies and also how to organize Expository using either 1) a “Funky E organizer” or 2) a Box Plan. The key things to remember about an Expository papers is that they are divided into 4 paragraphs (Intro, Body1, Body2, Conclusion). Writers use the Intro to grab the reader’s attention and build interest in the topic (\we call a Hook) and tell the reader what main topics will be discussed throughout the paper (Thesis statement). In Body 1 and Body 2, students are to introduce two main ideas to help support their paper’s main argument. Each body has a Topic Sentence, which tells the reader what the paragraph is about. In the Conclusion, students restate their thesis statement and include a final thought or comment about the topic.

Sight Word Homework

Parents, sight word homework is due on Fridays! This work only requires about five to ten minutes each day.

Monday: Write each word 5 times each

Tuesday: Write each word using stairstep spelling ( students should know what this is)!

Wednesday: Write each sight word in a sentence.

Thursday: Define each sight word and provide a synonym and antonym if possible.

unique	exactly	express
paragraph	receive	represent
observe	plural	singular

Like always, never hesitate to call or text 214-517-3793, and you can find these announcements any time at goingplaceslife-school.blogspot.com