A Busy Week

This week was another busy one as we prepare for the upcoming Kansas State Assessments. Students are reading in literature circles. We have nine novel groups, and each group is reading a different novel and completing response and center activities that are unique to the themes and skills found within their novel. Some of the most popular centers this week were the "Word Popping" station which focused on word building and the "Grammar Snowball" station which focused on direct and indirect objects.

In writing this week, students wrote expository paragraphs that reviewed our reading lessons on main idea and supporting details. Students moved through the writing process by choosing one topic and writing three paragraphs that expanded upon the topic. Students began publishing their paragraphs using PowerPoint to create a flip book puzzle. I created a screen cast which the students have used to create their flip books. It can be found under the resources section to the right.

To round out the week on Friday, we read with our kindergarten buddies, took our weekly assessment, and then played a Text Structure Jeopardy Game. The students enjoyed Jeopardy because they were the authors of the questions. Last week for focused writing, students wrote paragraphs organized by each text structure. The Jeopardy game required the students to identify the type of text structure their peers had written. It was a great way to wrap up the week!