Diving into Narrative Writing!

It is time to begin our FINAL writing genre of the year; narrative. We began by discussing with partners what makes a story GREAT. Students reflected on the texts and novels we have read throughout the year and compiled a list of the elements that made the stories enjoyable. 

Our next step was to unpack the narrative rubric with a partner.This process helps us to understand the language of the rubric by reworking each section into our own words. It also helps us understand what will be expected as we begin each mini-lesson. Finally, we identified what we could already do (sentence structure, mechanics, transitions, paragraphing, and elaboration) and what was new with the genre (craft, lead strategies, word choice). Next up, identifying memory triggers that inspire ideas for narratives!

Putting our RADCAB Strategy to Work!

Today, we began to look for online resources that could be used for our government research next week in Individuals & Society. Students selected a country in the Western Hemisphere to focus on and used RADCAB to analyze websites connected to it.

After going through the RADCAB process, students used their judgement to determine if the website was suitable based on the information they collected. If the website passed the "test", they posted it to Google Classroom to share with their peers.

Getting Back into Gear with a Genre Study!

I hope everyone had a wonderful spring break! In order to get our minds back in the swing of things, we participated in a genre study to help us review our Lang & Lit terms from the year! After a group discussion about important elements, text organizations, features, titles we have read, and author's purpose of each genre; students worked with partners to analyze a variety of text examples. The students didn't skip a beat and worked extremely hard. You would never have known we were on break for over a week! Great work kiddos!