Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Thursday/Friday, November 6/7, 2014


Announcements and Reminders:

  • You should already be signed up for your nonfiction book.
  • There will be no cave time intervention in Ms. Dorsey's classroom on either of these days.  
    • Thursday is Mock Trial enrichment.  
    • On Friday there will be no cave time in Ms. Dorsey's room.  
    • If you need to make up work, plan to come next week to cave time.  
    • On Wednesday in Cave Time, we will work on external text features.  
      •    Come if you did not receive the grade you'd like on the assignment where you looked for nonfiction text features in books -- and/or if you didn't hand in and do not have the paper from the outdoor scavenger hunt for text features. 




1. Individual reading of your nonfiction books.

Receive your November Book Assessment:  November Book of the Month.docx 
Click on the Download tab to open and print this document. 

FYI:  The climax in the action  is the highest point -- the point 

of greatest tension.  At the point of climax, something 

important changes -- usually the conflict is resolved.


2. Practice reading and writing about Informational Text. -- Individual Work. 
   

Your task: 
o Today you will read and respond to two informational (?)  passages.
o You will answer comprehension questions, including identifying the central ideas.  
o You will also write about each passage, and will write two paragraphs that require you to use information from both passages. 
o Stay on task and complete as much of the assignment as you can. 


Before you start, read through these instructions:

How to Read and Respond to Informational Text
1.  Skim the passages to see what you will be reading about.
2.  Skim through the questions you will be expected to answer.  Notice how much you will need to do, and what you need to be looking for as you read.
3.  As you read a passage, watch for the central idea and supporting details. 
        Ask yourself these questions:
o   What is the topic (what is it about)?
o   What is the central idea (main idea) the author is trying to teach you about this topic?
o   What evidence (supporting details) is the author using to prove
                                  that his central idea is true? 
4a.  As you read, underline or highlight a few of the facts or statements that you think might help you to answer the questions.  (Psst: Too much highlighting defeats your purpose.)
4b.  Also, as you read, make notes (annotate) in the margins or on the text.  Use abbreviations and symbols:  a ? for a question,  CI for what you think may be a central idea, ! by an especially interesting piece of information, and so on.
5.  Write your answers to the questions, looking back often into the passages, rereading as much as you need to. 
6.   Review your answers, making sure they are legible, and edit for conventions including capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.  (Hint: If a word you do not know how to spell is in the passage or in the questions, copy it from there.)
7.  When asked to write a longer answer (as in  5a, 5b, and 6 on the last page here),  answer with a central idea and supporting details for that central idea.  (Write a paragraph or more.)





If you were absent, when you come back pick up one of the packets for this activity, and complete it. 

You can download the book of the month assignment here: November Book of the Month.docx 
Click on the Download tab to open and print this document.