Holiday Book Exchange

If you would like another copy of the Holiday book exchange letter, click here

Holiday Book Exchange

Dear Parents,

We would like to celebrate the upcoming holidays by doing a book exchange in our classroom.  Here are some suggestions that the students have really enjoyed reading this year:  Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Nate the Great, Magic Tree House, Goosebumps, Rainbow Magic (fairy books), Babysitters club, and American Chillers.  These are only suggestions, please feel free to buy another book of your choice. 

Please bring the book wrapped to school by December 17^th.  The students will exchange books during our Winter Celebration on December 20^th.

Determining Importance

Determining Importance can be a hard skill for students.  This week and next week we will be working on determining what is important in text.  We will be using the terms Main idea and Determining Importance interchangeably.

Expository Writing

This week we will start a 3 week study on Expository writing.  Look for anchor charts and examples of this informational writing.  Students will learn how to use adjectives in their writing to make it more descriptive and to help the reader to visualize the writing.

Below the students are determining if the topics are a Personal Narrative or Informative.  This is the first step in learning about Expository writing, how it is different than Personal Narrative stories.

Creek View Spelling Bee

Creek View Spelling Bee

Creek View has signed up for the Scripps National Spelling Bee.  It is time to for our class to conduct its annual Spelling Bee to find a class representative for the Creek View Spelling Bee on Wednesday, December 18^th.  Attached you will find a copy of some words to practice for our class Spelling Bee on Friday, December 6^th.  Although the Spelling Bee is a wonderful opportunity to practice your spelling, you are not required to participate in this event.  However, I would like for everyone to try! Please let me know if you have any questions!

Spelling bee words

Fact and Opinion

Fact or Opinion?

• To see if something is a fact, ask yourself, 
  “Can this statement be proven?
• To check for opinions, ask yourself, 
  “Does this tell a thought or feeling?”  
  
  
• Look for clue words such as 
• feel, believe, always, never, none,
  most, least, best, and worst

Click on the link below to practice Fact or Opinion

Solar System game

What is Revision?

We have been working very hard revising our 3rd personal narrative.  Check out this video on what revision is!

Revision

Context clue practice

Context clues is a very hard skill for students.  This week we have began to work on it.  It was a great transition from our previous topic of inferring.  Students have to use text clues for both inferring and for context clues.

Below is a link that has several games for the students to practice context clues.

Context clue millionaire game

Context clue song

Context clue cow game

Words in context game

Show me...Don't tell me.

This week in Writer's workshop, we are learning a strategy to "Show me, don't tell me" your emotions in your writing.  This strategy teaches the kids to not say "I felt sad" but instead show the feeling of sad with descriptive words.  I have attached the powerpoint that I used to teach this concept.

Show me...don't tell me

Red Ribbon Week

Help Creek View Elementary Celebrate

Red Ribbon Week

(helping students make lifelong healthy choices)

October 21-25

Monday – Be RED-y to Say No to Drugs! Wear red!

Tuesday – Stomp out drugs! Crazy sock day!

Wednesday – Stay in the game; Be Drug Free! Wear your favorite sports team apparel!

Thursday – Be crazy about being Drug Free! Crazy hair day!

Friday – Gators don’t do drugs! Wear your Creek View Gator shirt! 

Happy birthday to August birthdays...

Happy birthday to our July birthdays...

Nouns, nouns, and more (Oh my!)

We are learning about nouns, pronouns, and proper nouns.  We have begun to find them in our writing and our Just Right books.  The links below are some videos that I used while teaching.  Check this out!

Pronouns

Nouns and proper nouns

School Showcase

Hope to see you all there!

Learning about character traits

We have worked hard this week to learn what a character is and their traits!!

Take a look!

Writers hard at work thinking about their seed ideas.

Metacognition

This is what we are up to this week in Reading.  We learned that TEXT + THINKING = REAL READING!!  Ask your child what "fake" reading looks like!

Why Writers Write

Today, we talked about that writers write for a purpose.  We made a list of why writers write.  Check out our list.

Reader's workshop

We had SO much fun decorating our Reader's notebooks today!!! Look and see...

Writer's workshop

We worked very hard yesterday decorating our writer's notebooks. Don't they look great?

First Week of school...Students hard at work

We are off to a GREAT start.  In these pictures we are working on an activity to "Guess Who?" the paper the students are filling out.  They will have an opportunity to present it to the class so the students can see what they have in common.