Save the Date for America Reads Day

AMERICA READS - Ocober 17th  America Reads will be observed at all five Prairie elementary buildings and Prairie Creek Intermediate on Friday, October 17th.  This will be a fun day featuring guest readers sharing their favorite books with our students.  Sign up by October 8 and consider joining us as a guest reader! Sign up online! Clickhttp://tinyurl.com/ksrsfos  to sign up and read.

Color-A-Thon Packets Due Tomorrow….

Just a quick reminder that Color-a-thon packets are due to the school store tomorrow.

This week we have been busy working on writing one sentence summaries using "somebody, wanted, but, so", and we have been talking about how this strategy can also help us to identify conflict and theme.

The conflict can usually be inferred somewhere between the "want" and the "but", and the theme can usually be inferred in the "so".

All of this is going to move us nicely into talking about narrative structure and writing in narrative structure!  

R.A.F.T. and Power!

We are in full swing this week.  In reading, we are working on developing theories about our characters and tracking them.  This moves us into being able to defend our thinking with evidence from the text.  In writing, we are working on developing a plan using R.A.F.T. and our read aloud book Wringer by Jerry Spinelli.    

R.A.F.T = Role, Audience, Format and Topic

We also began to think about the concept of power.  We will move into thinking about power within our books and with our characters, however, this is a social studies theme that will come up again and again also.  So far, we have thought about what power is, who has power and whether or not kids can change the world.

Throughout all of this we have been using as much technology as we can.  We have been using edmodo and blendspace as platforms for lots of thinking and discussion. 

Below are some pictures of us hard at work!

  

Creek Social Event

Creek Social Event!

Sponsored by the Creek PTO

Saturday, September 27th from 6:00-8:00pm

Stoney Point YMCA

300 Stoney Point Rd SW, Cedar Rapids

$6 per student, please pay at the Creek Office by Sept. 25^th

Sorry NO refunds

CREEK Students only

Please bring swimsuit and towel if you plan on swimming.

Parents not required to stay but ***Chaperones are needed***

Any help is appreciated even if you can only stay for an hour!

Please contact Brooke Arp to help or with questions:

mail4brooke@gmail.com

Many activities to choose from!  Gymnasium full of activities, pool (limited students per hour), Party room of games!  DOOR PRIZES!!!

Vending machines available for snacks and drinks (accepts $1 bills and change only!).

Our first 'Read and Feed' was a success!

Generating Ideas...

We have been working hard in our writers' notebooks this week to generate possibilities.  We have shared stories to make personal connections, made lists and wrote about the history of our names and from an object.

Yesterday everyone picked one possibility and wrote about it for 10 minutes.  We were really looking to build stamina.  Can we write and think and write and think for ten minutes without the dreaded, "Ms. Daly, I am DONE"?  We are never done as writers, however, we have to know what this feels like.  We are working on knowing what it truly means to "never be done" as a writer.  I have to say, the stamina in the room was quite impressive during this 10 minutes.

A lot of it has to do with writing about things that matter to us!

In reading we have been working on developing ideas about characters.  We will keep rolling with this next week too!


Don't forget literacy night tonight from 5-7.  Remember, you can come anytime between 5 and 7 without missing anything!  Book fair will be open too!

100+ books read

We set a goal at the beginning of the year that once we reached 100 books between Daly and Pickering homerooms, we would have a 'Read and Feed' to celebrate.  

Well, we did it!  I will need to make the goal higher next time :)  I love the readers all these kids are being!  They are truly taking on the identity of reader!  

So, we will be having a Read and Feed on Friday.  They can bring a snack for themselves.  No drinks other than water please.  

What I love about celebrating reading lives this way is that we are celebrating reading with reading time!  And, if you are wondering if they can sustain their attention in books for more than an hour, yes!  Yes they can!  These kids have proven their reading stamina this year, and they are ready!  

We will be sure to each have a "book on deck" for Friday.  

Book on deck = the book you will read after you finish the one you are currently reading

End of last week and start of this one!

Last week ended with us getting reading partners.  We will switch reading partners about once a month or so.  The purpose of a reading partner is:
To care
To share
To motivate

I look at it like the friend you always share your books with.  I tried to pair students with similar interests so that they can be caring about each other's reading lives, sharing their books with each other and motivating each other to keep reading!

We also had a chance to get on edmodo and join my class group.  While on here we did some chatting about books by creating "Book Buzz".  It was really good to get the computers out.  The kids love them.  I love them!  So, we will be using them more and more.  I have enough computers for a little more than 1/2 the class.

Today we started our writer's notebooks.  And, the first thing we need to do as writers is generate ideas.    The more ideas we have that serve as possibilities, the more we have when we need to write!

Today we learned that writers generate ideas by sharing stories and making connections.  We all shared stories and tried to make personal connections to each other's stories.  When we had a connection, we added it to our list in our notebook.

Literacy Night Reminder and Tuesday's Happenings

- You are welcome to come any time between 5 and 7 during literacy night.  Events will be on a rotating schedule, so you will be able to jump in when you get here!


Today we talked about reading with our minds on fire and capturing these "fire moments" in our reader's notebook.  We practiced pushing our thinking about these "fire moments" by writing long and using prompts to push our thinking.

-Fire Moments - moments in our books when we feel emotions or empathize with characters, when we can't wait to see what will happen next, when we question the characters, when we can visualize the setting so clear that it is like we are there…

-Writing Long - when we take an idea and write as much as we can in our reader's notebooks about it (like our thoughts just spilling on our papers).  We tried to get to half of a page today and some of us got even more than that!

-Prompts - sentence starters that help us keep going.  Could it also be…. To add on to that…. Another reason might be… This is making me realize… On the other hand… - Grabbing these prompts when we feel "stuck" helps us keep pushing our thinking and helps us take our thinking in new directions.


I compared this kind of thinking to being inside a garbage bag.  If we have a thought that is one dimensional, it is like standing up tall in a garbage bag.  However, if we have a thought and then push our thinking about this thought, it is like our hands and feet and head jetting out and pushing on the garbage bag in all directions.  I am picturing a "force flex" bag here!  When we pick fire moments to write about, we can challenge ourselves to think deeply about the text we are reading.

Homework for tonight is to read and to write long about one fire moment.  (definitions above!)