4th Grade Enrichment

This year I am working with a 4th grade reading enrichment group.  If your child is working with me for this group, he/she wrote a letter to you explaining our plan for the year.  This group will be working on a One Book, One Community project all year.  This project will have us reading 4-5 Bluestem nominated novels together, and at least one novel independently.  We will explore these books in-depth, using above grade level literacy standards.  Students will be choosing a winning novel, and will be responsible for planning and executing a culminating activity that involves the entire community. 

Our first novel is A Handful of Stars by Cynthia Lord.  We are using Notice & Note close reading strategies by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst to help us read more deeply.  These strategies help students identify "signposts" that alert readers to slow down and look closely at the text.  Often times strong readers race through the text without reflection to see how the story ends.  My goal is to create attentive readers that consider character development, theme, conflict, and point of view in a text, and can use text evidence to support their thoughts and reflections in these areas. 

This week we learned about our first two signposts:  Memory Moments, and Words of the Wiser.  Ask your child about these signposts, how to identify them in a story, and why they are important.  We discussed character development this week, and the relationships between the main characters, using text evidence to support our thoughts.  We explored the setting more deeply, and watched a video on blueberry farming in Maine.  Next week we will work on some visualization strategies and learn another new signpost.  I'm also hoping to introduce a guest blogger, where the students will be responsible for summarizing our weekly activities on my blog.