The fifth graders had a great time Skyping Liesl Shurtliff on Friday after we finished our read aloud, Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin. We prepared questions and gathered together first thing in the morning to meet this awesome author. She spent about a half hour with us. I love how accessible authors are now with Twitter, Skype, and blogging.
The kids wrote terrific thank you notes. Some of the students were really inspired by her and want to become authors themselves! We're really excited about her plans to write companion novels to Rump, and she even said she may send us an Advanced Reader's Copy! Wow! Now we're reading The Real Boy by Anne Urse during our unit on FEAR. Students have filled out almost all of their literacy contracts with due dates and title. All students need to have a nonfiction book about FEAR as of today. They are collecting/marking at least 10 sentences in their nonfiction books that describe fear. The second section and Discussion Plan #2 of the small group books are due Tuesday. New vocabulary lists were distributed today. NO weekly summary response letters next week.
We hope our 6th graders had fun at camp this week! We had to finish up 1st quarter assessments while they were gone - now everyone's taken them. We'll delve further into our TYRANTS unit next week now that we know everyone will be here! We started our read aloud, Milkweed, by Jerry Spinelli about the Holocaust.
Exciting news about our #ReadWalkWater project - we've raised over $4,000 so far! Mrs. Kleis and I gave a presentation to the Rotary Club last week, and they generously donated $500. We're asking that kids keep up their fundraising efforts because we're so close to our goal of $5,000!
Keep reading, reading, reading so we can all meet the 50 Book Challenge! We have 2 fifth graders and 2 6th graders who have already met it! :-)
REMINDER: Our 5th and 6th grade Written Education Plan meeting will be Thursday, Nov. 14th (conference night) at 5:00 p.m. in the CIS Cafe. I will give the camp kids their reminder fliers on Mon. If you need to schedule a conference that night, please schedule it after 5:30. Anyone who would like to schedule a conference with me that night, just let me know. I have a few slots open. Thank you!
