Thursday, October 11th

Reminders and Announcements 

• Mid Term Progress Reports Home Today
• Please send a water bottle to school with your student.  We no longer have fountains in the classroom and the kids get thirsty after recess.  The line at the fountain in the hall is long.

Reading

Focus Standards

•  RL.5.2 - Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.
• RL.5.1 - Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.

We are continuing to identify key events in our narrative reading and explain the importance of those events by showing how they help us understand the characters, plot, or theme.  Reading Groups are now reading novels or anthologies.  As we read, we are practicing note taking skills to assist us in our comprehension and discussions.  

Writing

Focus Standards

• W.5.3 - Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
• W.5.10 - Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Monday through Thursday we are continuing to work on our narrative writing.  Next week we will continue to work on bringing out the heart of the story and bringing forth the story arc.

On Fridays we are writing to respond to reading.  The point of response writing is to help students learn how to communicate and support their thougths about their reading and to proficiently respond to a given prompt.  Some weeks we will write a traditional response paragraph or mini essay.  Other weeks we will respond more creatively.  Tomorrow we will try Black Out Poetry for the first time as a creative way to bring out a message or theme.