We read and discussed a special article in TFK, called "The Year in Pictures." By looking back at moments of joy, triumph, hope, and tragedy, we were able to characterize the year of 2016.

After reading a book about green skyscrapers, students wrote 3-paragraph responses. In this writing, students summarized the ways new skyscrapers are solving the problem of energy inefficiency in traditional skyscrapers.

Our next and current book is about vaccines. We've talked about how the title can help one get a sense of an author's overall message. In this case, the message is about how vaccines have helped make the world safer, not just for individual people, but for all of us collectively.

In addition, we have been working on sharing meaningful thoughts about our books and/or our reading habits. These thoughts are ones that could, through further discussion, lead us all to deeper thinking and understanding about books, authors, characters, ourselves, and the world. We've been practicing listening with intent - with the intention of really understanding what is being said.

- After intense reading, discussion, and personal writing, students isolated ideas about which they felt strongly and felt the need to express. Working in pairs, we pushed each other to talk more about these ideas, helping one another decide if we each had enough to say about our idea.

- Working individually, students mapped out their claims and 3-4 chunks of supporting information from the text as well as a conclusion that expressed a new understanding.

- Drafting and revising followed. During the revision stage, students worked to: make sure sentences flow smoothly from one to the next; make sure the tone is consistent throughout and has a sense of authority; make sure text evidence is illustrated with quotes from the text and is clearly explained.

- Quick editing for capitals, punctuation, and spelling was the last step.

Looking ahead, we will now be reading several short nonfiction articles and writing in response to them.

We read and discussed a special article in TFK, called "The Year in Pictures." By looking back at moments of joy, triumph, hope, and tragedy, we were able to characterize the year of 2016.

Students reflected on their thinking in two different texts - one from September and one from December. All noticed an increase in thinking! We also noticed that while students are noticing unfamiliar words when they read, they are not always taking the next step of figuring out what those words mean. So, that's what we have been working on. We've tried strategies such as: read around the words, think about the situation, and plug another word in its place; look for meaningful parts of the word; think about where/when/how you've heard the word before; and think about the word's part of speech.

In addition, we are always keeping track of our progress with Independent Reading.

We read and discussed a special article in TFK, called "The Year in Pictures." By looking back at moments of joy, triumph, hope, and tragedy, we were able to characterize the year of 2016.

Students reflected on their thinking in two different texts - one from September and one from December. All noticed an increase in thinking! We also noticed that while students are noticing unfamiliar words when they read, they are not always taking the next step of figuring out what those words mean. So, that's what we have been working on. We've tried strategies such as: read around the words, think about the situation, and plug another word in its place; look for meaningful parts of the word; think about where/when/how you've heard the word before; and think about the word's part of speech.

In addition, we have been working on sharing meaningful thoughts about our books and/or our reading habits. These thoughts are ones that could, through further discussion, lead us all to deeper thinking and understanding about books, authors, characters, ourselves, and the world. We've been practicing listening with intent - with the intention of really understanding what is being said.

We read and discussed a special article in TFK, called "The Year in Pictures." By looking back at moments of joy, triumph, hope, and tragedy, we were able to characterize the year of 2016.

Since vacation, we have read and discussed a book about Origami. We used the Table of Contents to help us think about how to use the structure of a book while we read. We talked about how authors sometimes use words (like unleash) in non-literal ways. We also tried doing some origami!

In addition, we have been working on sharing meaningful thoughts about our books and/or our reading habits. These thoughts are ones that could, through further discussion, lead us all to deeper thinking and understanding about books, authors, characters, ourselves, and the world. We've been practicing listening with intent - with the intention of really understanding what is being said.

We have helped each other narrow down and identify the ideas that we feel most strongly about and have the most supporting evidence for.

Students have also been using an app called ReadNaturally/ReadLive to support accurate and fluent reading.

- The Glozel Artifacts: Fact or Fiction?

- The Mystery of the Iceman

- Building Green Skyscrapers.

Our lessons have focused on:

Fluency - reading with a longer pause after periods and colons;

Word Study - words roots can help readers read and understand words;

Vocabulary - using a thesaurus to find and think about words;

Word Study - the vowel/consonant/silent e syllable is a common one in multisyllabic words;

Comprehension - noticing when an author incorporates a narrative style into an expository nonfiction text, and thinking about why.

Comprehension - recognizing a text's structure and using it to help you remember and understand what you read.

Students have also done some writing in response to reading, some Independent Reading, and some planning for reading during vacation.

¥ The Mystery of the Vasa

¥ Two of a Kind: The Special Connection Between Identical Twins

¥ Unaccompanied

¥ Naturally Sweet and Addicted to Sugar (a two-way book).

Our lessons have focused on:

¥ Comprehension - noticing when authors summarize the reasons or ideas in a book; noticing how the information in a book is structured and using that structure to remember and retell;

¥ Fluency - putting stress on certain words to reflect the author's message; reading in meaningful phrases;

¥ Word Study - using prefixes to help you read and understand words;

¥ Comprehension - noticing when an author give you his/her central argument;

¥ Fluency - using what you know about a character's feelings to read with expression that matches the text.

• The Mystery of the Vasa

• Two of a Kind: The Special Connection Between Identical Twins

• Unaccompanied

• Naturally Sweet and Addicted to Sugar (a two-way book).

Our lessons have focused on:

• Comprehension - noticing when authors summarize the reasons or ideas in a book;

• Fluency - putting stress on certain words to reflect the author's message;

• Word Study - using prefixes to help you read and understand words;

• Comprehension - noticing when an author give you his/her central argument;

• Fluency - using what you know about a character's feelings to read with expression that matches the text.

Many classes spent a class recently using poetry to work on reading with expression. We talked about how readers use clues from the author - including punctuation, capital letters, line breaks, and spaces - as well as our own knowledge of the topic to decide how to convey meaning with one's voice. We analyzed and read one poem together, then students did the same work independently or in pairs before reading with good expression to the class.