Friday, September 26, 2014

Close Reading & Humphrey

 In my larger 5th grade group we have started Module 1: Unit 2 and a big part of that is getting back into Close Reading like we did in the 4th grade. Students did a great job rereading and looking for words they didn't know. Then they found the gist of the paragraphs. I'm very proud of their hard work.

We continue to read The World According to Humphrey as a school wide project and our students are LOVING it. I like to hide my Humphrey daily within my classroom and the students have the best time trying to find him and coming up with ideas of how he travels from place to place.

Monday, September 22, 2014

No Talking

 We are fully engaged in 5th grade ELA Module 1: Unit 1 and as a supplemental read we have been reading the book No Talking by Andrew Clements. It's overall theme is about our right to speak and in this books case, not speak. We have been learning all about our "Human Rights" and this book has been a perfect example of how we can communicate without actual words and sometimes when we talk less, we think more. We engaged in a little experiment last week where we had an entire conversation with a partner with no words, we wrote out all of our questions and responses. The students LOVED it and learned a ton about their partners.
Next up, Unit 2...Esperanza Rising and The Great Depression.

Monday, September 15, 2014

Welcome Humphrey the Hamster

Today we start a three week reading activity here at GES and we are all SO excited to welcome Humphrey the Hamster into our Guardino family.
The entire school will be reading the book The World According to Humphrey and competing for all sorts of prizes for school wide comprehension knowledge. All staff and teachers were also given t-shirts that say "Reading ROCKS at Guardino Elementary".
We look forward to reading a GREAT book and having some fun here at GES.