Halloween Carnival

Super-heroes, look-alikes, insects, and even a Storm Cloud! This year’s Halloween Carnival was a raging success. The 5th Grade students each created a Halloween-themed booth or game for the rest of the school to enjoy at the Halloween Carnival. We enjoyed everything from a Haunted House, to fortune telling, to graveyard bowling! Students dressed up in their creative costumes and had a great time socializing across grade levels. A few students even walked away with awards for their special costumes!

Reading

This week 4th graders began reading “Dear Mr. Henshaw”, a novel written entirely in letter format. Most of these letters are written by a young boy named Leigh, to one of his favorite authors, Mr. Henshaw. Through these letters the reader finds out a lot about Leigh’s struggles. While reading this book, students have been learning how to paraphrase and complete a SWBST chart. This acronym stands for Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then and is a way for students to summarize the plot of the book.

Writing

While developing essay-writing skills this week, Fourth Graders found that personal topics were easier to write about than broad “watermelon” topics. Students dug deep in their minds to make lists of people, places and ideas that are very important to them. With a list to choose from, students picked one topic that they will write about and defend during this unit. Finding three solid reasons to back up their claim was more challenging than they thought it would be. By the end of the week, students had developed strong bases for their essays to build on.