Please Excuse this Interruption

Those are the words that ran through our heads last Monday as we were hurried to lunch early because of Jackson's Water Crisis! School let out early! Thankfully, we were just finishing up our language arts lessons as the announcement came over the intercom. So, now that we are back up and running at Van Winkle, let us give you a peek at what was happening before that "Breaking News!"

In language, we discussed and reviewed the various types of nouns.

• A singular noun is just one person, place, or thing.
• A plural noun is more than one person, place, or thing. While we discussed plural nouns, we also talked about the ways to make words plural.
• Common nouns are nouns that name any person, place or thing. These are not specific.
• Proper nouns name specific nouns - a person's name, the name of a business, the name of a specific state. Proper nouns are always capitalized!
  
• Singular possessive nouns are used when one person, place, or thing shows ownership.
• Plural possessive nouns are used when more than one person, place, or thing owns something. We talked about the rules for possessive nouns while studying the latter two.

Mrs. Johnson made an anchor chart as we went through the lesson. The examples listed are ones we came up with as we reviewed.


In reading, Monday, we discussed the various genres. Not only did we review the broad genres of fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry...we also discussed types of fiction and types of nonfiction. We learned that fiction can be described as: short stories, novels, fables, legends, fairy tales, or myths. Nonfiction can be described as: biography, atlas, dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, report, internet, or textbook. After learning and reviewing these genres, Mrs. Johnson gave each person a sample passage and test question. We also had colorful cutouts (Mrs. Johnson never goes far from her construction paper!) to write our explanations. For example, if it asked the genre, we may choose fiction. On the cutout, we told WHY we chose fiction. Was it a fable? How did we know? This is one way Mrs. Johnson makes sure we "know that we know" the material. We always have to explain WHY!

Once we all finished, we brought them up one by one to share our reasoning with the class. We glued our passage, question, and explanation under the appropriate genre.

Now we have a visible reminder of the various genres!