This week we have really been working on reviewing some ideas that we have been talking about all year long. On Tuesday we had a giant sort race. The students were given a whole page of different notecards. They had to take the notecards and think of a way to sort them into columns. I was amazed at how the students quickly were able to sort the ideas into columns.

Today we worked on reviewing some nonfiction text features. To review these text features we had the students go on a scavenger hunt. The students had to search through some old Time for Kids.

The groups worked together to find:

• Titles
• Subtitles
• Headings
• Pictures and Captions
• Diagrams
• Charts
• Word Banks
• Bold Words/Highlighted Words/Italicized Words
• Maps

The floor was soon covered in tiny pieces of the magazines. As each text feature was found, the groups would glue it down on a sheet of paper. When the scavenger hunt was over, we talked about how authors use these text features in their writing.

In our new read aloud All the Answers we are getting to know our main character Ava. 

Today in the book Ava was upset to find her sanctuary, the school library, was holding a club meeting. Ava stuck around not wanting to leave and then got drawn into the meeting. The club was called the Chocolate Chip Cookie Club but really it was a group talking and thinking about poetry. The club was discussing similes and metaphors. The group moaned about the topic but then Mrs. Galvin shared a poem where the author was making fun of the overuse of metaphors by some authors. The poem is Billy Collins "Litany". Then with the last few minutes the club talks about Robert Frost's "The Secret Sits". I hope the book continues to discuss poetry. It will be the perfect ending to our poetry unit.

I hope you are having a great week.