We have just finished our descriptive writing unit.  In our writing, we focused on using the best possible words that we could to help create a vivid picture in the minds of our readers.  Students focused on using adjectives to write descriptions that incorporated a variety of senses and on choosing strong verbs to convey their thinking.  

Our first piece of writing for this unit was a descriptive paragraph to describe a place that was special to us.  After we finished this piece of writing, we used wonderful word choice in the mentor text "I Need my Monster" by Amanda Noll as an inspiration to create Halloween Poems.
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After reading our Article of the Week last week, students have been really intrigued by the use of self-driving vehicles.  When we did initial poll, 14 students said they would use an Uber service that used self driving cars, while 5 said they would not.  Students wanted to find out more about how the cars worked and what the potential benefits and dangers of its would be.  We started doing some research today and will share our pros and cons list tomorrow.  I wonder if the results of our poll will change when we repeat it after our research?

Our first class read aloud of the year is Wonder By RJ Palacio.  It is a wonderful book about overcoming obstacles and about the importance of being kind to others.  We are a few chapters in and the students are eager to find out how Auggie's first year of school is going to go.  Auggie is a boy with a medical condition known as Treacher-Collins syndrome who will be attending school for the first time in grade 5! Visit the author's website here!

Each week, we will be reading a current events article, or short story to practice various reading strategies.  We will also use the articles as a jumping point for spelling, grammar and word study activities.  This week, we started by reading a recent article from Student News Daily about an Uber service that has been launched in Pittsburgh using partially self-driven cars. The students had many questions about how the cars worked and whether or not they are safe, but our class poll still showed that many would be willing to use the service.  We will read the article again this week, and look a little deeper into the pros and cons before doing a second poll to see if our opinions have changed after doing some research.

Why Self Driving Ubers Are Driving Around Pisttsburg