Language Arts Activities, A Quick Summary

Hello Everyone!

This is just a quick entry to summarize what we are doing for LANGUAGE ARTS as related to our concept of STRUCTURE.

Reading Around the World: This activity will be going on all year long to help provide structure for the 20 minutes of reading recommended every night. Thank you to the many students who are already using their green duotangs as a guide for choosing new reading! Ms. Ho is also there to help you on Wednesdays when we go to library, and she has made photocopies of encyclopedia entries for students who ask. Remember, our objective is to read a variety of different types of material. Try a newspaper, magazine, journal, non-fiction article, etc. Thank you for your reading efforts!

Tuning In Articles: Students received a yellow duotang, that needs to stay in their backpacks each day, for our Tuning In program. The focus is non-fiction articles, which are found on the Articles of Interest Page. Six reflections are due by October 12th. Time is given in class, and students may also work on it at home. Please use the guidelines in the duotang for how to write reflections. Our goal is to use critical-thinking and metacognition skills while reading. 

Vocabulary Building!: While we do not do regular spelling tests, we do introduce a variety of new vocabulary during the course of a unit. These words are recorded in our journals, repeated often, and written on the board, with the hopes students will use them when talking about learning in their e-Portfolios. In the yellow duotangs, students also have a Byrdseed Vocabulary Builder List, which for this month is about HOMOPHONES. Many homophones are frequently mixed up and misspelled. There are a series of tasks we will do to review the words, and the first one is to create puns or jokes!

Skill Share Project: Each of us has a skill we could share with the people around us! As we practice quality structure of sentences and paragraphs, students will be making mini-presentations to share a skill with others. So far, each student has brainstormed what kinds of skills they may want to share. More details to come in a separate post on the specific criteria for the project.

Create a New World: Students will be using many curricular competencies from language arts as they do their socials-related project around STRUCTURE, which is creating a new world with a partner(s)! Look for details to come in a separate post.

This is a small snapshot of the many ways we use both curricular content and competencies from language arts throughout our unit and school day. Thank you for your support of these skills and tasks at home, as well.

Ms. D