Kosloski's Blog: November 2016

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

First off let me wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving! I know I have a lot to be thankful for including my family, both at home and at school! Fifth grade readers have been very busy these last couple of weeks...we covered a lot of skills including; making predictions, sequence of events, and story elements. We have also covered a few fluency skills, and of course have been reading a lot of good books! Each class is currently having a competition. Every month students set a goal for how many books they think they will be able to read, and then at the end of every month I conference with them to see how many they actually read. I have told them that the class that has the most books read by the end of the year will get a pizza party courtesy of me! So far Mr. Brown's class is in the lead with a 128 books!
Next month we will focus on our poetry unit. This is my favorite unit of the year because I get to see kids' creative sides. It is also fun for me to show kids that poetry might not necessarily be what they think it is. I hope everybody has a wonderful holiday season, and remember to keep READING! :o)

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Where has fall gone? This school year is already flying by, and so far it has been great. In reading, students have been doing a fantastic job, and we have read some really good books! Currently, fifth graders are working on Close Reading strategies, along with predicting and making context clues (very important skills to have as a reader). We are also reading a fantastic book called Wonder. This also happens to be a Battle of the Books book for fifth grade.
In my class students have started working on Blogs of their own. We will use these in a variety of ways throughout the year, but we will start by using them to correspond with another class through something called The Global Read Aloud! This is program where two classrooms from different parts of the world read the same book, and then discuss it through a variety of technology. In the past we have primarily used Blogs and Skype. We will most likely use these again this year. I hope everybody has a great rest of the week, and remember to keep READING! ;o)