Reading Fair 2009

This year's Reading Fair has now come and gone! Since Ms. Sasser is on maternity leave, Mrs. Johnson tried to fill her shoes. Of course, no one can fill Ms. Sasser's shoes...but Mrs. Johnson tried her best.

The reading fair was a great success! There were so many fantastic projects, and a few ladies from the downtown literacy department came to judge, as well as one sweet lady from Jr. League. The judging took all day! We are so grateful that these ladies took such care in choosing just the right project to win. All first place winners go to the district's reading fair! How exciting! As always, Mrs. Johnson was ready with her camera as we brought in our projects. She's like a proud mom!

First place winner in the Grades 4-5 Division!
Lyric
Charlotte's Web

Brindarius
Charlotte's Web

Alero
The World's Greatest Valentine

Arrion
The Kid in the Red Jacket

Selicia
The Pirate Chase

Quintarrius
Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants

Nacolby
Scooby Doo and the Deep See Diver

Jendaya
Pink and Say

Kenyada
The Big Wedding

Charles
Backyard Sports

D'Aubriney
Wayside School is Falling Down

Sherrina
The Adventures of Captain Underpants

Sabbion
Thank you, Mr. Falker

Jordan
Wayside School is Falling Down

Nadia
Drats! You Copycat!

Antasia
The Kid in the Red Jacket

Nareuna
Charlotte's Web

Kristin
Talk About a Family

Monique
Junie B., First Grader: Toothless Wonder

James
Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher

Mrs. Johnson was so proud of our class for all doing a project! Once again, this proves that we truly are the best!

Revisions - Test Prep

Mrs. Johnson's class forges ahead with a review of the last nine weeks. Can you believe that!? We have almost completed the first nine week term! Wow! Nine weeks tests begin Tuesday, and we are ready!

Today, in language, Mrs. Johnson reviewed the composing process. Good writers go through a process. First, they plan. This is called prewriting. (Remember when we learned that pre- meant before? Prewriting is something we do before we write.) We could do this in the form of a graphic organizer, outline, or just brainstorming. After we have planned what we will write about, it is time to write our draft. Drafting is our first attempt at putting our writing together. This is usually full of mistakes, but we can fix that later! After writing our ideas into paragraph form, we begin to revise our writing. It is this part of the writing process that we switch sentences around, add details, add more description, etc. Next, it is time to edit. Editing a paper is just fixing little grammar mistakes. For example, we might fix capital letters, punctuation, spelling, or verb tense. When our paper is ready to be written perfectly, we write our final draft and PUBLISH! Publishing doesn't mean we put it into a book necessarily. Publishing simply means that we share our writing with others - friends, family, teachers, etc.

Today, Mrs. Johnson showed us how the composing process may be tested next week. She pulled a revision question from some of her handy sample items. The question looked like this:

Mrs. Johnson covered up the answer choices, because she wanted us to really think through this question strategically. She has been hollering all week about strategies and gameplans and winning. She acts like she coaches football, and it's halftime. We cheer and yell back! We are pumped for next week!

We all had a white piece of construction paper (Mrs. Johnson never goes a day without construction paper!). We folded and cut it into fourths. On each part, we wrote one of the sentences. Then, we worked with a group to put the story in order. Narrative stories are told in sequential order, so we already had that clue.

James and Tatyanna share the workload as they write the sentences on their pieces.

Once Charles and Jendaya wrote their sentences, they read them together to see exactly what the story was about.

Jordan, Kenyada, and Sharnecia have read their story pieces. Now, they are thinking about what has to happen first in the story. They look for clues.

Arrion, De'Eric, and Alero debate about one part.

Kristin and Nadia figure theirs out. Now, they are checking it by reading the story to see if it makes sense.

After everyone put their story parts in order, Mrs. Johnson went over the story with us. We discussed what clues were there to help us order the story. Then, she uncovered the answer choices. All we had to do was find the one with the same order as what we had. Easy as 1, 2, 3! Next week, we MUST take every test question one at a time and use our strategies! We will not be tricked. We will not be beat. We will win! Go Frogs!

The Stars of House B

It's official! Mrs. Johnson is AR Crazy!!! We are reading our pants off this year! The great thing is that Mrs. Johnson is SO proud and excited when we read a lot. We think she may be a little competitive with other classes, because she always asks other students how many points they have. Maybe she is just trying to encourage EVERYONE to read!

This week, Mrs. Johnson went around to all the classes in our House and took pictures of each teacher's "Star Readers." These are top readers! Mrs. Johnson chose her students with more than 10 points.


We have many students who are very close to 10 points, but they will have to wait until next month. The House B Brag Board will be updated with new Star Readers each month. We look forward to seeing how many students really step up! But, for now, let's celebrate our Star Readers!

Sharnecia has 23 points!

D'Aubriney earned 19 points!

James is steadily reading! He has 23 points now!

Selicia is close with 22 points!

Wow! 26 points! Way to go, Sabbion!

Congratulations, Tatyanna, on your 15 points!

Nadia was excited to reach 10 points this week!

Jordan earned 10 points, but he is working hard for MORE!

And, Kristin is proud of her 11 points!

Mrs. Johnson took our whole class on a tour to see all the pictures of our Star Readers! Hopefully, next month, we will all be on the board! Congratulations, and keep those noses in the books!

Verbs

During this first nine weeks, we have studied a lot about the types of verbs. There are three main types of verbs we have discussed: linking verbs, helping verbs, and main verbs.

• Main Verbs are our action verbs. They show action.

• Helping Verbs "help out" the main verbs. For example, He is going to the store.

• Linking Verbs connect, or link, the subject to the rest of the sentence. Linking verbs do not show action. They describe a state of being. For example, He is at home.

As a review, Mrs. Johnson had a fun group activity ready. We worked in groups to look through magazines to find pictures we wanted to write about. Once we found a picture we liked, we wrote a sentence telling about it. Then, we had to decide if our sentence used a main verb, helping verb, or linking verb. We sorted our pictures and sentences accordingly. Mrs. Johnson was very proud of how well we worked together in our groups. Maybe she will let us do something like this again!

Kristin, Nadia, and Jordan are writing a sentence to go with their dinosaur picture. They had to use a helping verb, because the picture is glued under the helping verb category.

Nareuna, Lyric, and Brindarius discuss the possible sentences they could write.

Jendaya supervises Quintarrius as he glues their picture.

D'Aubriney and Tatyanna had such neat work!

Come by anytime to view our work displayed in the hallway!

Music Class with Mrs. Williams

This year, in music, Mrs. Williams is taking us "Around the World" in music! We made passports and everything! One of our stops - Africa! We were so excited! Mrs. Williams began by playing some African beats on her bongo drum. We all played to the rhythm that she set for us. We reviewed our quarter notes, half notes, and whole notes to help us with our beat. We had two groups that played different beats. It sounded so good!

De' Eric is focused on his beat.

Brindarius set the beat before we walked around the circle and played.

Lyric kept a great rhythm!

Walking...Look at Charles go!

Nadia is concentrating!

After playing the percussion instruments, it was time for an African song. We sang "Tina Singu," which is a song that Africans sing at sporting events.

Arrion pays attention as Mrs. Williams sings the song for the class.

But, the best part of all...DANCING! Mrs. Williams taught us the style of dancing used in Africa. We love it! Watch us boogey!

What a great experience to see the world through music!

Affixes, Affixes Everywhere!

This nine weeks, Mrs. Johnson's class has spent a great deal of time on affixes. Mrs. Johnson actually told us, "If we don't know anything else this term, we should ALL know affixes!" Of course, we know much more than just affixes! I think she just said that for the dramatic effect.

This week, we divided the affixes into two days. On Tuesday, we focused on prefixes. A prefix is a group of letters added to the beginning of a root word. Before the lesson, Mrs. Johnson gave each student a card. Some had prefixes on them, and some had root words on them. She gave us a few minutes to walk around the room and find a partner who had a match for our word part. Obviously, each partner group had to have one prefix and one root word to make a word.

Everyone put word parts side by side until they found the correct match.

Charles and Sabbion found their match!

After this quick activity to get our attention, Mrs. Johnson reviewed the many prefixes and their meanings. She told us how useful it is to determine meanings of unknown words when we know the meanings of their prefixes. For example, trans- means "across" or "change." So, transform means to change form. After the review, each group was assigned a prefix. Mrs. Johnson gave us circle maps. We added words, with the given prefix, to our circle map. Then, we wrote the meaning of our words based on the meaning of the prefix and root word. We did very well with this activity! And, if we got stuck, she allowed us to use a dictionary to come up with more words.

Jendaya and Sharnecia came up with words using the prefix, anti-. Anti- means "against."

De'Eric, Sherrina, and Arrion found meanings for words with the prefix, dis-. Dis- means "not, opposite, or reverse."

This group of boys came up with words and meanings for words with the un- prefix. Un- means "not."

Re- is a prefix we learned last year. This group came up with so many words that they ran out! They used a dictionary to find even more!

Mis- means "wrongly or badly."

D'Aubriney worked hard on her group's circle map.

Jordan had an idea for a word!

Wednesday, we focused on suffixes. A suffix is a group of letters that is added to the end of a root word. We did the same introductory activity. We each had word parts...some with suffixes, some with root words. We walked around to find our match.

Are you my match?

Mrs. Johnson and Nadia were a match!

After making sure everyone was matched correctly, Mrs. Johnson reviewed the suffixes briefly. She reminded us of their meanings as well. Next, Mrs. Johnson created a chart with a few suffixes listed. We came up with words for each suffix. As we added them to the chart, the class discussed the meaning of the word based on the suffix. We added the meanings too.

Kenyada added "meanness" to our chart because it uses the suffix -ness.

I think we are ready! Affixes, watch out! We've got your number!