Character, Community, Conflict, Connection, and… Comparing

We started off our day today by spending time with Mrs. Kovacs, who is filling in for Mrs. Chofi while she is on maternity leave. Mrs. Kovacs conducted a Words Their Way assessment with us, which will help us identify areas for glowing and growing as scholarly spellers.

After completing the assessment, we had an opportunity to choose from a wide variety of mystery books featuring… famous fictional problem solvers.

We were able to read for 19 minutes without interruption or distraction. This was a great starting point as we seek to grow our reading stamina. While hard to put our books down, we managed to pull ourselves away for a brief discussion of key characteristics of the mystery genre.

 

We then gathered on the carpet to share a reading of Eve Bunting’s book One Green Apple (Interview with Eve Bunting). While reading, we discussed character, motivation, point of view, author’s purpose, conflict, and theme. As part of our analysis, we referenced TASOK’s Learner Profile, trying to identify qualities evidenced in the main character, Farah. We will be rereading this text to further discuss Farah as a problem solver. Our captured thoughts will allow us to compare and contrast ideas with several other texts.

Continuing our search for details to help design a detective story, we examined a variety of maps of China. Since setting can play such a critical role in a story, it is important to know where our mystery will take place and how location and place will impact the character and plot.

After recess, our math-magical minds were put to work as we compared and ordered large numbers. Being able to justify and explain our thinking was a critical component of today’s work. Using the place value chart and expanded form was one way we were able to compare today.  Thankfully, we had our multiple source as a reference.


The highlight of the day was hearing such scholarly math conversations happening as we provided evidence for our thinking.

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