Hello Literature Families,
Hope you all had a wonderful winter break/holiday season. We are back in action over here in room 24.
A few things to know:
1. Today the students took their first spelling and vocabulary test for Toliver's Secret. They got a NEW list of 25 words to work with for the remainder of the book. There are a lot of uncommon words in this book. We, as a class, have discussed ways to help us know what we are reading. Some ideas were to look them up in a dictionary (book or web), ask a parent, use words around it to help (context clues), etc. We are starting a word chart in class of "wonderful words" (tricky words that are not on the spelling list) and will spend some time learning new words together as they pop up. Encourage your child to keep track of those words, so they can add them to our chart.
2. Writing focus #7 has been scaffolded for all students. They marked the questions that they will need to answer for our Friday conference. The students are welcome to answer more if they would like. Since the performance is around the corner and there is a focus on learning/memorizing their speeches, I felt it is important to scale things back a bit. More scaffolding will happen leading up to our performance.
3. Speeches: Please help your child practice their identity speech daily! They will not be allowed to have cards with them during the Guild Faire and performance. The speeches should run around 2-3 minutes. Encourage expression and eye contact. Some students may volunteer to deliver their speech on the stage before the Guild Faire. The rest of the students will deliver their speeches at their guild booth while guests shop. If your child is a female dancer in the performance, then she will be a female through the whole day! There are a couple of students who started out as a male identity for guilds, but there will not be enough time for a costume change. So, their speech should be in the voice of their male identity's wife/ or older daughter. ex. "Hello, I am ________'s wife ______________. Unfortunately, he could not be here today, so ___________ asked me to take his place. My husband was born in 1726..."
***It's not on the calendar, but each student will deliver their speech in front of our literature class starting on Friday, January 23rd and carry over to Tuesday, January 27th. They will be scored on their speech based on report card guidelines.
Hope you all had a wonderful winter break/holiday season. We are back in action over here in room 24.
A few things to know:
1. Today the students took their first spelling and vocabulary test for Toliver's Secret. They got a NEW list of 25 words to work with for the remainder of the book. There are a lot of uncommon words in this book. We, as a class, have discussed ways to help us know what we are reading. Some ideas were to look them up in a dictionary (book or web), ask a parent, use words around it to help (context clues), etc. We are starting a word chart in class of "wonderful words" (tricky words that are not on the spelling list) and will spend some time learning new words together as they pop up. Encourage your child to keep track of those words, so they can add them to our chart.
2. Writing focus #7 has been scaffolded for all students. They marked the questions that they will need to answer for our Friday conference. The students are welcome to answer more if they would like. Since the performance is around the corner and there is a focus on learning/memorizing their speeches, I felt it is important to scale things back a bit. More scaffolding will happen leading up to our performance.
3. Speeches: Please help your child practice their identity speech daily! They will not be allowed to have cards with them during the Guild Faire and performance. The speeches should run around 2-3 minutes. Encourage expression and eye contact. Some students may volunteer to deliver their speech on the stage before the Guild Faire. The rest of the students will deliver their speeches at their guild booth while guests shop. If your child is a female dancer in the performance, then she will be a female through the whole day! There are a couple of students who started out as a male identity for guilds, but there will not be enough time for a costume change. So, their speech should be in the voice of their male identity's wife/ or older daughter. ex. "Hello, I am ________'s wife ______________. Unfortunately, he could not be here today, so ___________ asked me to take his place. My husband was born in 1726..."
***It's not on the calendar, but each student will deliver their speech in front of our literature class starting on Friday, January 23rd and carry over to Tuesday, January 27th. They will be scored on their speech based on report card guidelines.