Week of September 14th: Off to a Great Start!

 Important Dates:

9/17 Back to School Night for 5th Grade and Middle School Families

Helpful Hints:

Student Planners with Meet agendas and work are posted weekly in the Reading Course for 5th Grade and the English Course for 6th Grade.  Click to access the 5th Grade Planner or the 6th Grade Planner for this week.

To keep our Course looking tidy, I am putting all work in a weekly folder.  Past week's folders and work can be found in the black Previous Learning Folder.  I encourage students to complete work in a timely manner, but understand that sometimes that is not possible.  All work will be scored on a full credit scale regardless of when it is turned in.  

Reading This Week:

This week and next we will be focusing on comprehending literary text.  I have found that teaching students to annotate as they read increases their comprehension, but often students do not know what to annotate.  What is important to record?  To help with this, I like to teach Notice and Note as a strategy for note taking.  Students learn that author leave clues or "signposts' to help them discover messages and themes in the text.  We are learning how to recognize those signposts and are practicing looking for them in our independent reading this week.  Next week we will practice using short stories.  By October we will move into our novel studies with Wit and Wisdom and be ready to annotate as we read more complex text.

These anchor charts have been provided to the scholars to help them recall the different signposts.  I linked the charts in case some of you want a copy or if the students prefer a printed copy.  They will also receive a bookmark with the signposts when they get their ELA materials.

Questions?  Concerns?

Please know that you can contact me at any time with issues or questions.  My email is melissa.anzick@fcps.org.  You can also message me through Schoology.