The Kitchen Sink for the Week of 9/17/12

Readers’ Workshop

In an effort to prevent injuries (from carrying home 70 journals), we are revamping our Reading Response schedule. Responses for students with numbers 1-12 will be due each Tuesday, students with numbers 13-24 will turn in responses on Wednesdays, and students with numbers 25-34 will hand in their journals on Thursdays.  There will be no response due this week to ensure all students have ample time to write a quality response.  Journal collection will resume the week of September 24, under our new schedule.   We will also continue to focus on creating mental images this week.  As good readers, we should create a mental movie in our minds as we read.  If our movie gets “blurry,” we should take steps to get it back into focus.  Steps include: recognizing confusion exists, continue to read seeking clarity, focusing on details, and rereading.  Ask your child how they use these strategies to clarify their mental movie.   

Writers’ Workshop

After reading the rough drafts, we noticed that our work with details is not done!  We will explore alternate ways of describing tastes and flavors, since nearly every draft includes the line, "It was delicious."  Our next hurdle will be to tackle the first and last lines of our pieces.  We will do a series of lessons this week on engaging beginnings (using action, strong feeling, dialogue, and/or sound effects) and reflective closings (tying in a greater lesson that was learned using a smooth transition).  Students will compose several versions of a beginning before ultimately choosing the one that best hooks the reader.  We will discuss the lesson of our memoirs, before brainstorming transitions like the following:  as time passed I saw that..., months later I knew that..., it became clear that..., looking back I see..., Now I realize..., One thing I know now..., and so forth.  See the blog for updates and specific examples later this week.

Skills Block

List 4 will be tested this week.  Homework is due on Friday.

We will continue to review the types of sentences and their appropriate punctuation.  A purple handout with definitions, details, and examples was distributed to each child.