Room 227’s Blog

Here is a sample book trailer we made.  The students each made their own, so please make sure to check them out on their own blogs!  There is a chance to write a comment at the end, so please do so!

Thanks,

Miss B.

Thank you Mr. Falker.

1.  Listening to your group’s recording, what are 3 comments you can make about your group’s book club meeting overall?  Please do not comment on your volume, necessarily, but rather the quality of conversation you were having.

2.  How did you come prepared for your book club this time?

3.  What are 3 positive comments you can make about your own contribution to the book club meeting?

4.  What are 2 comments you can make that tell how you could improve for future book club meetings?

5.  Other comments?

Hello Everyone!

I wanted to share with you one of the ways our class is reflecting on our recent Reading Workshop unit  on Social Issues.  Have you ever seen a book trailer or know what it is?  Well, our wonderful and talented librarian, Ms. Tara taught us a little about a website called photopeach.com.  It is a great way to create reflections on the books you read, but for us, we are looking at creating our own book trailer for a Social Issues book we read in our book clubs.  Another website called animoto.com is great too, however, I found that photopeach is more simpler to use, you can leave comments after you view the book trailer (yay! We love feedback!), and ultimately, it is more user-friendly. Take a look at these 3 examples of book trailers below:

We were reminded from Mr.Utecht, our cool tech guy expert at ISB, that it is VERY important when looking for a picture on the internet (or music and so on…), to have permission.  The best way, he taught, is using Flickr and making sure we are searching  images that use creative commons.  I’ve included a short video explaining what creative commons is, just in case you didn’t know, or forgot!  A great website brought to my attention by Ms. Hellyer is called compfight.com.  I highly recommend it as an easy to use image search tool, and NOT Google images.  It searches creative commons images using Flickr.  The students are learning how important it is to always be permitted to use something that is not theirs and then attribute the image (or other work) so that the creator is given credit.  Stay tuned for the students’ finished book trailers that they will post on their blogs.

Dear Parents and Visitors,

The character dress up party was a success last Friday Oct.30th.  Miss B’s class along with Mr. Armitage’s joined together in celebration of the end of our Character unit.  Mr. Armitage  hosted the party in his room where treats were displayed on a table, waiting to be eaten.  Thank you to the parents who helped make this possible.

We were so lucky to have such visitors as: Harriet from Harriet the Spy, Addie from Can You Get an F in Lunch, Charlie from Drama Class, Joey from What Would Joey Do? Henry from Henry and Ribsy, Hermione from Harry Potter, Sarah from Chrysalids and so many more!

Take a look at the video of the party.  A job well done!

If you are reading (like our class is) or have read Sahara Special by Esme Raji Codell, you may be interested in reading up on some interesting details about the book you wouldn’t otherwise know!  This link will take you directly to learn more about why Esme wrote the book, her influences as a child, how she became a writer and she also answers questions about the book itself!  It is very interesting! Check it out!

Miss B.

This is our 2nd book review as a class so that we can practice together what a good book review sounds like, how it’s constructed and how it should make our reader feel at the end.  We looked at Daniel’s book review on his blog and talked about what we liked.  We said things like, we like how he talked about how the author used descriptive words and how that helped him visualize the story. We also liked how he included a little summary of the story without giving away too much.  We also liked how he made sure to include the book title, but next time he should mention the author’s name.

Next, we reviewed the content of the book (as we had previously read it together) and I showed them a template that would help scaffold their summaries.  I made sure to remind them to add their own thoughts about the book or the author’s craft.  Then, we came back together and wrote a class review, taking bits and pieces of everyone’s ideas, all wrapped into one.  Here is what we came up with:

We are going to write a book review about Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett.  In the beginning, the main characters, Henry and his sister are being told a bedtime story by their Grandpa. Most of this book takes place in the make-believe town of Chewandswallow.  This town is no ordinary town!  Their food falls from the sky!  Things such as sausages, hamburgers, giant pancakes, pea soup and so on! The weather turns for the worse and we’ll leave it up to you to read the book to find out what happens to the citizens in the town of Chewandswallow.  Will they survive? Or will they suffocate under a giant pile of mashed potatoes?  In case you didn’t know, Barret has a follow-up book to this one called Pickles to Pittsburgh.  We hope you get a chance to read both!

There is also a movie version of this book that you may consider watching.  It is making its debut this year!

P.S. Do NOT read this book if you are hungry!

Mmmm...pancakes!

If you were in our classroom during Reading Workshop, you’d hear a lot of buzzing, and NO, I’m not saying there’s a bee’s nest in our room, either.  Our students just love to talk!  Talk about reading, that is.  Nearing the end of their silent reading time with their JUST RIGHT books, they sit next to their reading partner and share about the book they are reading.  Some of them make post-it notes of interesting or important thoughts they’ve had while reading, while others may be using graphic organizers to record their deeper thinking in order to share later.  Partners have opportunities to ask clarifying questions or may even choose to jot down the name of the book to read later because it sounded so interesting!

This week we have started our Character unit, so students are reading in partnerships with the SAME book!  This should make for even more interesting dialogue and comparing of ideas.  Way to go, Gr.5!  Buzzzzzzz your hearts out!

Miss B.

Our class started learning about what makes a good book review or ‘book talk’.  The students have been asked to write one book review every 3 or 4 books they read.  We finished a read-aloud called And Then It Happened Book 4.  We decided it would be a good idea to practice how to write a thoughtful, well-written book review by first visiting Ms.Tara’s blog. She is our elementary school librarian. Looking at one of her posts called Up in Heaven, we discussed with our reading partners what we noticed about that particular book review and what kinds of ideas we could use for our own individual book reviews.  Here is our class’ book review we did together:

Title: And Then It Happened Book 4 by M & L Wade

This is one book of 8 from the series And Then It Happened. The authors, Mike and Laura Wade are from Canada. There are 3 boys named Gordon Paulo and “I” who get themselves into a lot of trouble!  Usually each chapter is a different adventure where we learn about them getting into trouble or sometimes ‘getting away clean’.  Gordon is a character who is a prankster and the other 2 boys think his ideas are brilliant and back him up.
This popular series is very funny and the authors do a good job of making the book addictive and there are parts that are suspenseful.
We hope you get a chance to read this series. If you need a good laugh, this is the series for you!