Read in the Dark!

On Tuesday, November 25, students will participate in our annual Read in the Dark! Rooms will be darkened and students will bring a flashlight, book light or back lit reading device, curl up with their favorite book, and relax! We have permission for students to wear pajamas on that day, and they may also bring a favorite (small) blanket, pillow, or stuffed animal. Any items brought must fit into their locker.

Upcoming Dates & Read in the Dark!

Students are learning what techniques authors use to introduce and elaborate on a struggle in text. We are practicing using the inspiring stories of Lauren Hill and Erica Powell. They will be assessed on this skill on Monday, November 24. View the rubric for this assessment here or on the homework page. If your child will not be in school on Monday, please have them check in with me to make up their assessment after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Read in the Dark!

On Tuesday, November 25, students will participate in our annual Read in the Dark! Rooms will be darkened and students will bring a flashlight or back lit reading device, curl up with their favorite book, and relax! We have permission for students to wear pajamas on that day, and they may also bring a favorite (small) blanket, pillow, or stuffed animal. Any items brought must fit into their locker.

This is an event enjoyed by all and even the administrators are likely to pop by with their favorite book to have a break with the kids for a few minutes!

The STRUGGLE goes on...

This week, students discussed what struggle means to them personally, and then were able to see what their peers identify as personal struggles. This changed a lot of student's minds about what struggle is! It was a great revelation to see!

Now that we've identified and discussed our own struggles, we are moving on to identifying the struggles of others and how they react or change to them. We have been reading a chapters of Bridge to Terabithia and Firegirl and analyzing what struggles the characters go through. Next week, we will begin identifying and analyzing struggles in nonfiction text, including a focus on Lauren Hill, the Mount St. Joseph University basketball player who only has a year to live.

Please ask your child about struggle and discuss how our ideas of struggle change when learning about what others have gone through. They have learned an important lesson when talking about struggle: never say something isn't a struggle, simply acknowledge that it is not your struggle.

Unit 3: Struggle

We began Unit 3 yesterday and the students did a wonderful job of identifying their own struggles and respecting their peer's struggles. Our activity was called What's In Our Hearts. I can tell this is going to be a very powerful unit!

Please visit What Are We Studying? to learn more about our unit. For the rest of the week we will be reading a chapter of Bridge to Terabithia, attempting to identify how the plot of this chapter unfolds, what the character's struggle is, and how this struggle changes the character.

For homework, we've asked students to bring in an example of struggle from outside of the classroom. This can be a quote from a novel, a news story, a photograph, or anything else tangible that can be put onto a bulletin board to depict different instances of struggle. This is due Friday.