Age of Exploration

The 5th graders are busily working on  creative writing stories- using the editing process of writing and rewriting.  Some of them have given themselves the challenge of taking their writing to the next level and trying to write a mini book length story. We cannot wait to see where this leads.  They are also having fun with homographs and homophones in their writing and connecting this concept to the Chinese language.

The students have started their new books in their book groups along with the 6th graders.
This time around the students are reading Newbery Medal Award winning books or honorable mentions: Bridge to Terabithia, Olive’s Ocean, and The Westing Game. My group (The Westing Game) has a mystery to solve! We are working on making predictions, keeping track of all of those clues and adjusting our thinking as we read the story. Let’s see who got the prediction correct!!

The students finished up their mini- biographies on women.  Now they are on to The Age of Exploration, where they are taking a look at  Early European Explorers and their impact on the civilizations they met in the New World. For our opening discussion, the students had lots to say as they shared their observations, asked questions and had wonderings.