Earthquake!

We spent today's class looking at the features of news articles.  We want to write the best possible feature stories we can, so we need to know what goes into making a news feature effective, first.

We began with a list of words, and students tried to determine which words were "in" the article and which were "out" of the article, sorting them into two lists.  We talked about which words we thought were in, and why we thought this.  Then, we made a prediction about what we thought the article would be about.

We then practiced our ability to recognize the 5Ws in a lead paragraph.  Students recorded these after reading the opening paragraphs from the article.

Finally, we began to look at the components of the middle of news features.  We noted the Province article used facts and interviews with people to develop the story.  We noted three different facts (which are different from opinions, remember), and we looked at the importance of two different quotations from the article.

We will continue writing our own feature stories next day.

What's in the News?

For the past few classes, we have been working on a news article, reporting on an incident of the student's choice.  We spent time last class looking at the features of news article openings, and we practiced locating the 5 Ws (who, what, where, when and why) in an opening.  We also considered how we could begin our articles so that we would capture our reader's attention.

We continued this practice during today's class, as well.  Students finalized their openings today, and they submitted their opening paragraph to me.

We Aren't Going to Make It!

We practiced our prediction making today, making logical, informed predictions about an article, based on a picture, then the title, and then the "blurb" from the side of the article.  Students are getting better at making predictions that are based upon the evidence in front of them.

After we made predictions before reading, we then read the article together, stopping after short chunks to continue predicting what would happen.  Students used the details of the article, plus their background knowledge, to guess what was about to happen next.

Finally, we began filling out a "Problem - Solution Outline" which allows us to summarize what we understand of what went wrong, and the different solutions that were tried.  We will continue with this activity  on Thursday.

Spiderwebs!

Emily led our community building activity to start class: the creation of a spiderweb that represents the connections we all have with one another.  Each student was asked to share a little bit of information about him/herself, and then after sharing, he/she would toss a ball of yarn to someone else.  As the ball unraveled and students held on to their respective spot on the string, a giant spiderweb was created.  Thanks, Emily!

We then spent class time working on our persuasive paragraphs.  Using the model paragraph we wrote together last week, students were asked to choose a topic that interested them, create a "Seeing Both Sides" outline, and then write a paragraph on that topic.  We will continue working on these paragraphs next day.

Rate My Teacher

We began class with a community building game... where Ms. Barsky invited students to come along on a trip to space, but only if they brought something that began with the same first letter as their name!  Once students caught on to the trick... we had a space ship full of interesting items: eggs, mashed potatoes, a kite, a space suit, and a killer robot. 

Then, students worked in small groups, facilitated by a mentor student, and practiced making predictions using text features (such as pictures, title, subtitle, bold words, and quotations).  Once students had made predictions, they read through the article together (sharing the job of reading aloud) and summarized the main points.  Finally, students began to organize the main points into a graphic organizer titled, "Seeing Both Sides."  Their task is to find evidence to support both sides of the argument - Should students be allowed to rate their teachers online? - and to place the evidence on the corresponding side of the graphic organizer.  We will complete this part of the task next class.

Trick-or-Treat

We finished working through the article called, "Trick or Treat" today, summarizing the main ideas as we went along.  We talked about how information such as statistics or quotations from individuals were too specific to be considered main ideas, and so we left these details out.  We ended up with a short list of points as a summary of the entire article.

Then, using a graphic organizer titled, "Seeing Both Sides," we responded to the question, "Should trick-or-treating be cancelled?" with examples from the article.  We listed four or five points for each side, and then added a few ideas of our own.  We discussed that the Seeing Both Sides graphic organizer is good for preparation for a debate, or as an outline for a persuasive paragraph.

And then we had some chocolate treats.