Fig Pudding

My fifth grade group finally finished reading Fig Pudding by Ralph Fletcher. It is the wonderful and yet heart wrenching story of a year in the life of the Abernathy Family; their ups and downs. I starts on Christmas of one year and wraps up on Christmas of the following year. The kids LOVED it and we had a fantastic time reading and discussing it.
During the story the 6 Abernathy kids make stollen each and every year with their grandmother. I was able to buy some stollen and bring it in for the kids to try.

Can you tell it is getting close to Christmas?

The consensus was that the stollen was pretty gross, only one student liked it, BUT they can now say they have tried it in their life!

What a fun group.

This student loved it and asked to bring the rest home.

Our next book...Because of Winn Dixie, an all time favorite of Mrs. C.

Tis the Season...

...to read a good book. Even though it isn't officially December 1st we have started reading lots of holiday stories in reading class this week! This particular group of third graders read Christmas in the Big Woods.
They are thrilled to be getting into the holiday spirit!

Next on the list is Aunt Eater's Christmas Mystery.

Rules Powerpoint Presentations

Mrs. Dermady's 5th grade reading group was finally able to present their Rules PowerPoint Presentations to their class yesterday. Each student was given a topic from the book and they were asked to create a slide regarding their topic. I was thrilled with the amount of effort and creativity that they showed.
Topics included; An overview of the book, describing the main characters, likes and dislikes, information about the author and the theme or message of the book.

Students added clip art, backgrounds, and were even able to personalize the font.

We were given a 3+ out of 4 score from our audience (the class!)

Way to go 5th grade readers!

The book we are now currently reading is called Schooled and it is extremely challenging, but very interesting. We dislike when class time is over because we want to KEEP READING!

Informational Text

New York State has encouraged us to add 50% more Informational Text into our daily teaching so we are jumping right into it in reading class. We are currently working on a butterfly unit with Mrs. McCullouch's group of readers. They are loving every minute of it!

The Janitor's Boy

Would you chew thirteen pieces of bubble gum and then smear them on the bottom of a school desk because you were angry at your dad who was also the custodian of the school?? That is the question and experiment that we had in reading class yesterday afternoon. I gave all of my students three pieces of gum, had them chew, take it out and then asked them to stick it under their desks. They looked at me like I was insane. This was our introduction into the new book we will be reading for the next month...The Janitor's Boy.
The gum was a major hit!

Put this under my desk are you crazy??

YUCK!

We can't wait to dive into this book!

Homonym Bingo with 5th grade after a long week! They had a BLAST!

GORP

We just finished reading The Adirondack Kids; Book 1. For our final project we made GORP (granola, oats, raisins and peanuts). We also added some M&M's for a little kick. We plan to make "Save the Loons" posters and present our GORP and posters next week for the whole class.
The kids had a blast making it and loved eating some M&M's even more at the end!

Check out the book The Adirondack Kids, it is a great 4th grade book if you enjoy the outdoors and it is even set in New York State.

The funny thing is Sydney (on the left) actually has a real life twin, but for today Kira (on the right) is her twin!

See how happy they are to come to Reading Class!

Farewell Matthew and Good Luck!

Fast Fact Reading Friday

Today was the first monthly Fast Fact Reading Friday. Each grade level was given a different skill to work on. The primary students had different "sight words" to practice, third grade had contractions labels, fourth grade had fact/opinion labels and fifth grade worked on homonyms. As a Reading Department we thought it would be quick, fun and educational. Here are some pictures of students and Mrs. Dermady. I harassed her because she had forgotten to give her kids their labels by 10am so by 10:30am she was ready and went above and beyond the calling for the activity.

Third graders had to either tell what contraction the two words created and spell it correctly or break apart the contraction and tell what two words it came from.

Fifth graders had to tell the difference between the two homonyms.

I am so happy that our first FFRF went so well!

Mary Marony and the Chocolate Surprise

We just finished reading Mary Marony and the Chocolate Surprise. We read, wrote and discussed the book. Since the kids worked so hard they were rewarded with a giant chocolate bar containing a golden ticket just like in the book. They were so excited their eyes bugged out of their heads!

Good work Chassattie, Torrie and Griffin!

Making Progress

We have been working diligently on ELA preparation and basic skills. Times have been challenging, but we haven't given up and today two of my students from Mrs. Peterson's Class finally got a 100%. I was so proud of them and quickly awarded them with some Smarties for my smarties!

May you be poor of misfortune,

rich in blessings,

slow to make enemies,

quick to make friends,

but rich or poor, quick or slow,

may you know nothing but

happiness from this day forward.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

How to Steal a Dog

We are currently reading How to Steal a Dog with my group from Mrs. McCullouch's Class. We are about halfway through and we just created our own "Reward" signs for Willy, the dog who is missing in the story. The group worked well in teams and created terrific posters.

Great Job Kids!

Shiloh

Mr. Riddoch's students and I just finished reading the book Shiloh and we are now currently watching the movie. The students are taking notes as they notice similarities and differences between the two. I am very proud of them. In the thirty minutes that we have watched thus far they have taken a ton of notes.

They even brought in their own stuffed dogs to watch the movie with us. As the movie concludes the students will be writing a compare and contrast piece using the notes they took from watching the movie. I can't wait to get started!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

Today is Read Across America Day and it is also Dr. Seuss' birthday so we are celebrating with lots of his stories and reading as much as he can to honor him!

Brain Pop Jr.

I am utilizing a program called Brain Pop Jr. with many of my classes to teach smaller skills. Today we read the book The Pain and the Great One and then watched a short video that taught us refresher skills on contractions. The girls from Mrs. Rosbrook's Class really enjoyed it and then we worked on a practice sheet of contractions. They did so well and I am so proud of them!

Top 10 Lists

We are right in the middle of reading the book Because of Winn Dixie. We just finished reading Opal's list containing ten facts about her Mama. We then created our own Top Ten List of interesting facts about ourselves.

It was a very fun activity and we all learned some interesting facts about each other!

Book Presentations

After all of the holiday craziness wore off we were finally able to present our project for the book Hotel for Dogs. The kids did a fantastic job and their classmates gave them all 4s for their project! Way to go kids, I am very proud of your work and effort!

We will now read the book Rules!