Literature Circles

We are back in the swing of things once again. It was a fabulous break. We all got the chance to relax and come back refreshed. This week we started our literature circles back up. We chose the book Dear Levi. It is about a boy who leaves his younger brother behind and writes him letters everyday. We respond in our reading journal by making connecting and predictions/inferences. We also include our favorite parts and the scenes we could really visualize. Sometimes we write a Dear Diary section from the brother that was left behind point of view. We all know he must be going through a hard time being left alone without his companion/brother. Plus if you read the book you will find out he gets stuck with all the chores and much much more!

We will not be able to write this Friday. It is Western Day and we will be out in the corral all day!

Shiloh

This week we read a book called Shiloh. It was about a boy who got attached to a dog. The man is mean to the dog so the boy tries to buy Shiloh from him. Later in the book the dog gets hurt and the boy has to hide him, before the owner kills him. He makes a deal with the man and has to work really hard to buy the dog. Finally, after a lot of torture he lets the boy have the dog.

After we read the book we did a double bubble map comparing the differences in the book and the movie. 16 of us like the book better because it has a lot better descriptions and information. If a book had a movie to go with it...which would you prefer? The book or the movie?

Stomp the TAKS test

Hello Mrs. Braymer's Class! We apologize for being absent for so long on our blog. We have missed learning about what you guys are up too!

As you know the TAKS test is TUESDAY! We have so many feelings going on right now! We are happy, scared, nervous, confident, and glad it is going to be over all at the same time! We want to encourage you to: write at least a full page, have a good beginning and ending, focus on one thing, address the prompt, take your time, use a variety of transitions, don't use too much dialogue, and add a lot of good juicy details.

We know you can do it! Stomp the TAKS in the ground! Good luck to you all!

Idioms

We studied our brains out when we learned about idioms this week! Do you know what an idiom is? Idioms are....expressions whose meanings are not predictable from the usual meanings, such as "break the ice" or "kick the bucket". Idioms are a great way to spice up your writing. But be careful, you might not know what it means and it could mess up your paper. They are good to use if you know how to use them. Miss Bontrager wanted us to know how to use them properly so we made our own book of idioms. We drew a picture of the literal meaning and then wrote the idiom and on the next page we drew a picture of the actual meaning and wrote the definition. It was a lot of fun and some people came up with the funny pictures. We now feel comfortable using idioms! 

We missed out on blogging last Friday, because Miss Bontrager was at a writing conference. She brought back a lot of ideas that will help us as we write. We now having writing partners. They are to help us see if we are on the right track. They also tell us what they think about our paper. If it is good or not so much. We work together to find ways we can show what we mean rather than just tell. We are working on not writing summaries and becoming story tellers. We hope you all have a great weekend!

Creative Writing Pumpkin Projects

Hello Mrs. Braymer's Class we have missed blogging with you. We are glad things are up and running once again. Over the past 3 weeks we have been working on a pumpkin project at home. We had to make a pumpkin out of anything but a real pumpkin. This made us think outside the box and get creative. We used household items to help us make our project. We had to write a 2 page paper over an adventure our pumpkin character went on. We just got finished presenting our projects to the whole class. We even had a few guests in the audience. This project was 4 english grades: Visual, Oral, and 2 for the written story. Everyone did a fabulous job. We have 2 cousins in our class and they collaborated together and came up with corresponding stories. We hope to upload pictures soon to share our projects with you guys!

It is so good to be back online!

Happy Halloween!

Love, Miss Bontrager's Class!

Sometimes I Like.....

This week we made a book about what we like. Miss. Bontrager read the book "Sometimes I like" by Vicki Churchill. Then we brainstormed things that we sometimes like to do! We drafted our sentences and then revised to make juicy details. After we were done with those steps we went back and edited to check for errors. When we completed the writing we began to make our books for publication. We plan on reading our books to our kindergarten book buddies. Do you have book buddies? Would you be interested in making a book! We hope you have a fabulous weekend! 

Love,

Miss Bontrager's Class