Jamestown and Forward

As we near Thanksgiving, students are (or should be!) finishing up Elisa Carbone's Blood on the River.  Students have a persuasive essay due on Thursday or Monday; they have to decide whether or not the American Indians should have shared their resources with the Jamestown settlers.  To conclude this book, students will watch and discuss National Geographic's Nightmare in Jamestown.

Between the holiday breaks, students can choose to read either Fever 1793 or Chains, both by Laurie Halse Anderson.  Fever 1793 is available in this month's Tab; if you decide to purchase this book, please order through Scholastic online, or send in $5 no later than Thursday, 11/18.  Also available is Chasing Lincoln's Killer for $6, which we will read in the spring.

In social studies, (or social arts as the class says), we will be working on colony projects.  Each student will choose a colony to research and will create a project to share their knowledge (our hope is that each student will make a commercial in the computer lab).

School news:  Please remember the Thanksgiving luncheon next Wednesday, November 24th.  Art work will be up for viewing from 11:00am until 1:00pm and lunch begins at noon.  Dismissal will be immediately following the luncheon.
This year's book fair will be a Scholastic on campus event, from Monday, December 6th until Wednesday December 8th. On Tuesday the 7th, Tom Angleberger, author of The Strange Case of Origami Yoda will join us for a book signing (and maybe even some origami!).  Please join us for this exciting event!

And finally, some contest news for our young writers:
Nat Geo's Young Explorer Contest
An essay contest with a big prize-- a trip to the Cayman Islands!  Open to ages 9-15. (A CS alum won this contest a few years ago and enjoyed a trip with his father to Australia!)

Nat Geo's Find Your Footprint
For students interested in exploring our carbon footprint.

Celebrate America: "Why I'm Glad America is a Nation of Immigrants."
For fifth grade only

Barnes and Noble "My Favorite Teacher"
Honoring teachers!

Phew!  :)

Hope you all have many people and things to be thankful for!
-Katrina

Virtual Jamestown

Please see here for interactive maps.

Also, please visit here.

Monday, November 8th

Video: Written in Bone

Moving Forward

Just before Fall Festival, all language arts classes finished up their unit on aboriginal American Indian stories.  Each student read a variety of stories and used the traits that found to write their own stories.  Today, we are starting Elisa Carbone's Blood on the River, James Town 1607, a historical fiction novel about the settlement of Jamestown.  In addition, language arts student will be reading two chapters from Sally Walker's Written in Bone, detailing an archeological dig at Jamestown.  I'm happy to share that most everyone is excited about the book-- a few students read the entire book over the weekend and I heard several students say they couldn't put it down! 

In social studies, we are also moving forward to look at the early settlements of North America.  Students will have an opportunity to read a variety of resources telling the same story and compare point of view and bias (we hope to have a debate on the merits of Columbus).   Because our studies are so closely linked, the students have decided that instead of "language arts" and "social studies," we will have "social arts." The enthusiasm in our classroom is contagious!

Native American Sign Language

Video from Smithsonian

Language Arts Updates

In class, we've been reading a variety of American Indian star myths, using They Dance in the Sky.  As we've read, students have taken notes of common themes and patterns in the stories and are now writing their own American Indian style myths based on constellations.  We will present these in class next week and finish this unit with a field trip to the planetarium at the Science Museum of Western Va on Thursday, October 7th.  We will leave campus at 9:00am and return before lunch. 

This week's Small Writing style is Expository.  Students should have rough drafts that are ready to be edited today.  Better drafts are due on Thursday. 

What does it mean?

I found a great article on National Geographic's website to share with you about Native American words. Follow this link and find out what "Roanoke" means!


First person with the correct answer to comment wins a treat from next week's Bake Sale!

Scholastic Book Orders!

Middle school students will continue to have the opportunity to order books from Scholastic again this year. It's an affordable way to fill your child's library with great reads and help fill our classroom with high-interest books. Scholastic has made it even easier to order online.
It’s so simple! Here’s how it works:

SIGN UP at www.scholastic.com/bookclubs. On the parent page, register by clicking click the “Don’t have a user name or password?” link. When prompted, enter the one-time Class Activation Code: H2CNC. This unique code ensures that your order is sent to me.


SELECT the books you’d like to order—choose from thousands of titles—many more than in our monthly flyers.


SEND your order to me online by the due date and your child’s books will be delivered directly to my classroom.

Here are some titles that we may read in class this year:
Chasing Lincoln's Killer, James Swanson
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, Jacqueline Kelly
The Legend of Bass Reeves, Gary Paulsen
War Horse, Michael Morpurgo
Riot, Walter Dean Meyers
Chains, Laurie Halse Anderson

Welcome Back!

September is here and it's time to begin a new school year! We have lots of great books to read, fun field trips to go on and exciting days planned. I hope everyone gets a good night's sleep and a filling breakfast tomorrow morning. We'll see you in the morning!

Summer Reading Program

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Less Paper, More Trees!

Great article about ways to cut down on paper usage in the classroom.  This year, we tried turning writing assignments in through Google Docs, rather than printing everything out.  I think it's been a success.  What are your thoughts?

Thanks to Lelia for sharing this article!
A Paperless Classroom

Greg Mortenson visits Hollins!

Just a quick note-- Greg Mortenson is visiting Holllins University today and thanks to some wonderful parents who work at Hollins, we were able to meet with him for half an hour.  He was so thoughtful and our students were captivated.  Our school raised almost $750.00 to donate to Pennies for Peace and we were able to present a check to him.  Several students read paragraphs they had written to him about why they consider Greg to be a hero.  My favorite part was when a student asked Greg what his inspiration is and who are his heroes.  Greg's answer?  Children. 

Rome Videos

Check out our videos on what it would be like to live in anicent Rome!

Back to School!

We're back from our spring trip to Washington, D.C!  It was a great trip.  We visited the Newseum, the International Spy Museum, a few Smithsonians, the monuments along the Mall and the National Gallery of Art (where some of us saw an actual Da Vinci painting and a few Vermeers!).  The hostel is always a wonderful place to stay; the kitchen and dining area makes it easy for us to make breakfasts and pack our lunches.  The students had many opportunities to interact with different groups of friends and I truly appreciate being able to see first hand how CS kids value one another. 

Monday was a very productive day, despite the fact that so many kids are focused on Spring Break!  To expand on our study of heroes, I read three children's books to the classea and we discussed which characters were heroes and why.  I read The Paper Bag Princess, by Robert Munsch, The Lorax, by Dr. Suess and Smoky Night, by Eve Bunting.  Today, we are reading articles from CNN's Hero Project. and sharing about real-life heroes. 

This week's small writing is a free choice, but I've asked the students to focus on last week's trip.  Spring Break starts on Friday (No school!) and we'll return on Monday, April 12th. 

Julius Caesar on The Cosby Show!

Julius Caesar

Scholastic Book Orders!

Scholastic book orders are a great, easy and affordable way to build up your library!  The selection is varied and I offer both Arrow (grades 4-6) and Tab (grades 7-9) to meet all reading levels.  I send home a paper flyer each month, but you can also order online.  One perk of ordering online is that we get extra FREE books for our classroom!  In addition, you can use your credit or debit card and don't need to worry about writing a check.  I encourage you all to browse the flyer, either the paper one or online, and order books for your reader. 
When you go to the Scholastic webpage (http://www.scholastic.com/), our class user name is KatrinaLangArts and our password is lovetoread. 

Thanks for all of your support!

Links for Rome Research

First Years:
Please use these links as you work on your research for our project on Ancient Rome.

History For Kids- Romans

Kids Konnect-- Ancient Rome

PBS on Ancient Rome

Remember, Wikipedia is okay as a place to start, but it's not a reputable site!  You may NOT use it as one of your sources!  You can find infomation there and verify it on another site! 

Individual Book Suggestions

Parents and Caregivers,

Today I handed out book suggestion lists, personalized for each student. Last week, each student completed an interest survey. Based on these surveys and on what I already know about them as a reader, I created a list of books that I think they may be interested in. Some of the books are directly related to topics they mentioned-- a lot of students like to read books about vampires!-- while other books are ones that will expand their literary horizons.

We are so fortunate here at Community School that loving to read is considered "cool," and that so many of our students include reading as a favorite pasttime. My goal, as a language arts teacher, is to encourage our readers to try new books (new authors, new genres, etc.) and to also build up those who either struggle to read or don't find reading pleasurable. To this end, I often read books, or chapters out loud to them, I hand out and go over in detail the Scholastic book order forms and I give the students ample time to share what they are currently reading with their peers. My hope is that by the time they enter Seminar, they are excited about books.

Two reading specialists I often look to are Esme Codell and Donalyn Miller. Please check out their blogs for more information.

As always, please get in touch if you have any ideas or suggestions, or even if you just want to share your favorite book!

-Katrina


Esme Codell
http://www.planetesme.com/

Donalyn Miller
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/book_whisperer/

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1970104.Donalyn_Miller/blog

Last week of February

The end of February is here and hopefully it will be a week without snow and a five whole days of school!

Here's what's going in language arts:
Small Writings continue; this week is free choice and next week (due on March 4th) is a narrative. An expository essay is due on March 11th and a persuasive essay will be due on March 18th. There is no small writing due on March 25th, as we will be on our spring trip to Washington, D.C.

We are reading Tiger, Tiger, by Lynn Reid Banks. This exciting novel takes place in ancient Rome, which coincides with our social studies unit. I am reading the book out loud to students who are interested; other students who prefer to read independently are given that choice as well. The students have been given several questions (10) related to the multiple themes in the book-- humans' relationships with animals, thinking for yourself, doing the 'right thing'-- and will choose 4-6 questions to answer. They will also respond to each other's writing.

Although it may seem uncommon to read out to middle school aged students, it's actually a beneficial practice. It meets the needs of auditory learners and allows for students to work on their active listening skills. Below is a link to an article by Donalyn Miller, author of The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child, about why reading out loud is still important.
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/book_whisperer/2009/03/never_too_old_reading_aloud_to_1.html

Students: the first two people (CS students!) to comment on this blog will recieve a book of their choice from the next Scholastic book order!

Links for Labyrinths

More information on labyrinths, following our look at Daedulus, the Minotaur and the labyrinth:

http://labyrinthsociety.org/

http://labyrinth.thinkport.org/www/

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to school! I hope everyone had restful holidays and that we're all ready to jump right back in.
In language arts, we will be reading a Reader's Theater version of Oedipus Rex. This follows our mini-plays, where Katrina's class performed The Illiad, Linda's class performed The Odyssey and Emilie's class performed The Aenied.

This week, we are looking at Greek and Latin root words and are creating our own. It's a lot of fun!

Following our study of Greek theater, we will all ready Tiger, Tiger by Lynn Reid Banks.

A reminder that there is NO small writing due this week, but we'll be back on track next week.

*As an effort to increase traffic here on the blog, I'm going to start posting occasional questions. Post your answer and before I post the next blog, I'll choose a winner at random. Here's today's question:
What book(s) have you enjoyed that have been made into movies? Do you like the book or the movie more? Why?