ELA and Reading Weekly Update

We had a great turn out for Open House last night.  Thank you for coming.  I am attaching the PowerPoint that the 5th grade team presented last night.  Please let us know if you have questions.

This week in ELA we are beginning our persuasive unit of study.  We will be learning the different characteristics of persuasive writing.  This unit is very fun and the students love voicing their opinions on different topics.  We will also continue with our grammar study.  I have noticed that some students are still struggling with identifying parts of speech such as: nouns (common and proper), verbs (action), adjectives, and pronouns.  Next week, I will be setting up Study Island so students can practice these skills at home.

This week in Reading students have been learning different strategies to use while reading and responding to literature and nonfiction.  We have been using talking stems and listening to our inner voice.  They have been given notes that can and should be used for assignments.  It is important that students are able to find evidence from the text to support their answer.  Some talking stems include:

• I think _______________.
• I think _________________ because the author said ____________________.
• On page ________ the author said ___________________________.
• According to the text ________________________________.
• I wonder ________________________________

I will introduce a new set of roots on Thursday (I will post those words soon).  The next roots test will be on Friday, August 29th.

Let me know if you have questions.  Thanks and have a great week!

Here is the PowerPoint from Open House

https://docs.google.com/a/oconeeschools.org/file/d/0B97w14i9by3rdkF2Q29zcGVJQnc/edit