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Ms. Karlsson's 5th Grade Class Discovery Elementary 2300 228th Ave SE Sammamish WA 98075 425.837.4100 |
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Writers on The Web: Discovery Students Read Their Own Stories in Their Own Voice! Expository essays are set up using the 5-paragraph outline. Students use this outline to help them organize their material into a logical, sequential 5-paragraph essay. This same outline can be used to extend their essays, if they choose to write a longer essay. · Narrative essays have strong use of story elements, such as setting, character description and traits, problem/conflict, events, and solution/resolution. · Expository and Narrative essays are graded on the 6 Writing Traits: organization, ideas, sentence fluency, word choice, voice, and conventions. Students and teachers use the Issaquah 4-Point Rubric for Six Traits for grading expository and narrative essays and a Six Trait checklist is given to students to help them analyze their own written works. To help us review/learn these 6 Traits, we have Writing Coaches review and meet with us from October to January. Writing Coaches are parent volunteers who read approximately 4-6 student essays. Every three weeks, the Writing Coaches come into the classroom to meet with the students one-on-one and provide feedback and suggestions for improvement on their essays. · Creative writing essays are free-writes. Interesting pictures/photos are displayed in the room, some with captions, and students can choose one of these to write a story to. These essays are not graded, but they are invaluable to us because as we learn new writing strategies and skills, students go back to these stories and apply them. Over the year, their creative stories are rich with details and voice. These stories are often the favorites to be chosen to be read aloud for the class. · Spelling and Grammar Year Plan o Spelling words are taken from the curriculum and class novels we are reading. In addition, a main part of our spelling curriculum is a study of the Greek and Latin roots that make up words, as well as Greek and Latin prefixes and suffixes. o Each week, students are given an average of 10 words they must learn to spell and define. Words are usually given on Fridays and the test is the following Friday. o Students choose three activities from the Spelling Menu to complete each week using their vocabulary words. The purpose of these activities is to allow students to see and write the spelling words many times, but in fun ways to practice and study. o Grammar is practiced two times a week. Please reference the Year Plan above to see what we are covering. Many people do not have good memories about learning grammar, but we try to have fun with it. For example, when we are learning about prepositions, we will create a preposition book for our kindergarten reading buddies similar to In the Night by Jan and Stan Beranstein. We also play ‘preposition bingo’ to get used to seeing and using the prepositions. |