October is here!

 Students have been writing poetry using personification of fall and doing close readings of Scholastic magazines this month. The magazines provide a fun entry point to get students to start thinking about referring to the text to cite their source or back up an opinion.
So far my favorite discussion has been about sharks. Students looked at the picture on the cover that showed a great white shark leaping from the water with its mouth wide open and wrote about what they saw. Then after reading the article about how conservationist are working to protect sharks they reflected on how the cover image was related to the text. The final step for this assignment was to explain a quote from the text that spoke to moving the idea of sharks from fear to fascination. This fits with the 5th grade common core goals and is very engaging in the classroom.
                                                                           

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