End of the Year: Reading and Writing

Hello friends! I hope your end of the year countdown is nearing it’s end! We still have quite a few days left but the end seems to be quickly approaching! Luckily, we have taught and assessed almost all the we need to when it comes to reading and writing. Phew! So, now we are working on some review activities that wrap up the skills we’ve been learning. Here are the two projects we were working on this week!

The first project we were working on was an opinion writing project. We spent some time researching different places around the world. We were strapped for time, because I only wanted to spend a day learning about them just to keep the project at a week. We used World Book Online to learn about each place. Then, the kiddos went to work picking one place that they really want to visit. They had to give three reasons why they wanted to visit this place.

It was so cool to see where they wanted to go! We went through different places such as Africa, Australia, Paris, etc. Then they got to pick one other place, their choice, to research. It was really exciting to see the places they chose. Many of them picked places where they had family like Colombia, Libya and Mexico. Once they had their reasons, they started their drafts. We always start with a scaffolded draft, like in the picture. Then they move to a draft in their composition notebook. Here’s a look at their final copy:

Our next project was for reading. We made book brochures! This idea came from Amy Lemons at Step into Second Grade. The kiddos each picked out a just right book of their choice. The only guidelines I gave were that they had to be able to read it and it had to be fiction. Then, the kiddos went to work! They had to do write a retell, their connections, the setting, the characters and they had to recommend it to a friend. The kiddos really got into this project!

When they were finished, they shared them with the class when they were done. They really got excited about sharing their favorite books with the rest of the class! It really motivated them to read. I’ll take that at the end of the year!

I hope your last few weeks are going smoothly! We are almost to the end:) I hope you all have a great week!

1 Comment

  1. Anonymous
    Author
    May 19, 2016 / 5:05 pm

    is there a link to the opinion writing piece?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *