Romano’s Recipe for Reading and Writing

In yesterday’s shortened class we focused on literature circles.  Using the Reader’s Journey books, students were presented with Discussion Guidelines for their literature circles.  These guidelines include: listening, building on what others in their group say, questioning, and referring to their reader’s response journals.  Students were also assigned their fourth anchor novel readings. 
Homework:

Descriptive Essay due [...]

Due to the Olympic Schedule, today’s class was only 60 minutes.  As a result, we did not get to spend any time working on our Narrative Writing Assignments.  Students were given time in class last Friday and were told to have three of their five paragraphs written for today’s class.  For next class, I would [...]

Happy Friday!  Today in class we began reading The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton.  This will serve as an anchor book for our first unit of study.  We will be reading this book together in class.  Today in class we read chapter 1.  Students took notes after we finished reading.  They will use these [...]

After spending our last class discussing the six traits of writing,  reading a sample personal narrative, brainstorming memorable moments in our lives, today students focused on narrative leads.  Students were given three examples of how to start their narratives by engaging the reader.  Use of strong avtion verbs, dialogue or reaction was suggested.  Students received [...]

After starting the class with a writing warm up connecting our Essential Question with our anchor book, we proceeded to review students’ responses to the literary analysis of “The Amigo Brothers.”  For the remainder of the class, our focus was nouns.  In class we differentiated between common and proper nous as well as abstract and concrete. 
Homework:

Type or [...]

Today, students received their grades for their first vocabulary test based on their anchor novels.  Please ask your sons/daughters to see their grade.  Some students were required to have them signed.  Students who did not do well will have the opportunity to do a retest, if they write sentences using all of their vocabulary words.  This [...]

What do Maya Angelou and Dav Pilkney have in common?  Both were author’s whose memoirs were studied in today’s reading class.  Our class discussion revolved around non-fiction texts sharing the qualities of character, setting, conflict and plot with pieces of fiction.  Students reviewed external and internal conflicts as well.  In addition, the reading strategy of marking [...]