Dear America Contest Entries!

Our entries for the 5th National Dear America Student Writing Contest have been mailed out! Students interested in participating chose five entries from their Plymouth journals to submit to the contest. Our entries will be up against other entries from third through seventh graders around the country!

We'll find out how we did on April 29th! 

Writing Mentor Texts (by Alec and Andrew)

Today 4-324 worked on mentor texts in writing. The mentor texts were: Chicken Sunday, Sam and the Lucky Money, and Our Gracie Aunt. A mentor text is a book that a writer would look at to inspire the examples writers or to see what the writers liked.

Some of the examples for our work is: describe, describe--pointing out different areas that really describe the character. For example in Sam and the Lucky Money when Sam thought "for once I am glad to follow my mother."

Another example is clear visions. Which is when you can see what's happening in your mind very clearly. An example from Sam and the Lucky Money when Sam saw: "The colorful lion wove down the street like a giant centipede. Teased by a clown wearing a round mask, it tossed its head up and down."

This is what we worked on today in writing. Remember! You can find a mentor text anywhere!

What did you learn from studying the mentor text? Leave your comments here!

A Sneak Peek...

Our independent writing publishing party is on Friday morning at 8:40 a.m. Here's a sneak peek at one of the recipes being featured in Alec's cookbook this Friday morning: chocolate layer cake!

We hope you can join us! 

Personal Essay Writing Celebration: Take Four

Here's a link to information about our Personal Essay Writing Celebration! Enjoy our last video where we share some of the comments we received!

Personal Essay Writing Celebration: Take Three

Here's a link to information about our Personal Essay Writing Celebration! Enjoy another video where we share some of the comments we received. 

Personal Essay Writing Celebration: Take Two

Here's a link to information about our Personal Essay Writing Celebration! Enjoy another video where we share some of the comments we received.

Personal Essay Writing Celebration

We celebrated our accomplishments during our personal essay unit as part of a writing celebration last Tuesday! We enthusiastically read and commented on our essays. Our essays included strong thesis statements, and we used varied types of evidence to support our thesis statements. We concluded our celebration by meeting to share some of the comments our classmates left for us. Enjoy our short video where we share some of the comments we received!

Official CD Release: 12/2/2010

After much anticipation, our CD of podcasts was officially released today! Enjoy listening to the tracks on your CD! Post comments here letting the writers know what you enjoyed about their podcast!

Also, enjoy a short video we filmed dancing once we had all our CDs!

Podcast CD Release Date: 12/2/2010

The wait is over! Our Podcast CD will officially be released this Thursday, December 2!!!

Before this can happen, we need YOUR help coming up with a name and cover for our CD! 

Here's some important information to keep in mind:

• The podcast contains our personal narratives and our short fiction pieces.
• Each student in the class has a podcast on the CD. 
• During our writing unit, we really focused on bringing meaning into our pieces and on adding a variety of details. 

Post your name ideas here or bring them to class! Bring in your CD cover designs by Tuesday. A CD cover should be 12 centimeters long by 12 centimeters wide (a square with a perimeter of 12 centimeters on each side). 

Making Your Own Podcast!

So, you're ready to make your podcast? Here are some step-by-step directions to help you get started.

1) Practice reading your piece aloud to several different partners. Make sure you're reading with expression and meaning.
2) Double-click on Garage Band to open it (It should be a small guitar icon in your toolbar. If it is not there, you will need to go into Applications to find it. I can help you with that.)
3) On the screen that says "New Project," click "Podcast," and then click "Choose."
4) On the next screen, save your podcast as your first name (Ex. "Katie") and for where choose "Desktop." Don't change any of the other settings!
5) Garage Band will open!
6) Click on either "Male Voice" or "Female Voice" on the left side of the screen. It does not matter which you click on.
6) Now you are ready to record. Click the red circle to STOP the recording. Talk clearly into the computer.
7) Click on the red button again to STOP recording when you are finished.
8) To play your podcast back, bring the thin red line all the way to the start of the podcast. Click the play arrow or press the space bar. Your podcast will play back to you!
9) If you like your podcast, go to File and select Save!

If you need inspiration, you can always listen to Ray Martinez's podcast! Make sure you click the small play arrow to start the podcast.

First Family Friday and Writing Celebration

Last Friday was our first Family Friday! Families came into the room to celebrate our first published writing pieces. We began by sharing a video of our favorite lines with everyone. Then, we met in small groups to share our pieces. We wrote each other notes, telling what we especially admired about each writer's writing. Here are some pictures of our morning! Click on a picture to see it larger.

Inspired by Lois Lowry

Today, we read Crow Call by Lois Lowry, a beautiful story about her experiences crow hunting with her father one morning after he returned from World War II.

As we approached writing, we allowed ourselves to be inspired by Robert Frost's words. When someone asked him, "How do I learn to write?" He replied, "Read Anna Karenina, read Anna Karenina, read Anna Karenina." We realized he could have just as easily said, "Read Crow Call, read Crow Call, read Crow Call." In order to learn all we could from a text, we needed to read it, then re-read it and re-read it. We tried this with Crow Call, reading the text thinking, "What has Lois Lowry done that I could emulate in my own writing?"

Here are just some of the ideas we came up with! Click on the charts to see our ideas enlarged!

Do you have any additional ideas about what Lois Lowry did as a writer that you could try in your writing? Share them here!

Using What We Know to Write Narrative Entries

Today we began collecting notebook entries for our first narrative writing unit. We started by charting all the strategies we've learned for generating notebook entries over our school careers.

Can you believe all the different strategies we know as writers already? We will get to choose from these strategies, any other strategies we know and all the strategies we learn as we write our notebook entries this year.