Spectacular Reading Response Journals by Austin & Connor

Have you ever written a reading response? If you haven't, you should definitely try it out! There are some steps to writing a reading response. Here are the steps. First, read a book. If it’s a long book, you can just read a chapter. Second, fill out a graphic organizer.  You can even use your hand! Trace your hand on a piece of paper. Put the main idea in the palm of your hand and put five supporting details on your fingers.  Your graphic organizer is like your rough draft that you write all the important events from the story that you want to remember. Next, use your graphic organizer to write your response in your journal. Now it’s time to draw a full-page picture. We all rate ourselves on a grading sheet before we hand them in. Lastly, everyone swaps journals so they can grade each other’s and give advice and comments to help you with your next response. Some things our class is working on are full page pictures, paragraphs, or colorful vocabulary, spelling and grammar.  We rate ourselves and each other using four main categories; Awesome, Good, Okay, and Oops! I forgot it.  If you ever try reading responses in your class, we hope you’ll enjoy doing it!

What are Precepts??? by Keira & Jisella

Do you know what precepts are?  If you don't know, we´ll tell you.  It’s like a motivational speech.  So like...if you're getting bullied an example might be, “Be a buddy, not a bully.”  And here’s another one; “Your actions speak louder than words” There's one that says, “If you want a friend, be a friend” There might be some precepts you don't understand and there might be some that you do. However, they all have one thing in common;  they're supposed to remind you to be kind and to treat others how you want to be treated.  Our teachers are REALLY big on precepts and sometimes so are we. We’ll say a precept without even knowing we’re saying one!  Our classroom has a lot of posters of precepts to keep reminding us to be thoughtful of others!

Real-Live "Wonder" by Stephanie & Sofia

The book, Wonder, is about a kid named August Pullman who was born with a cleft palate along with other birth defects.  Auggie had been homeschooled since he needed lots of surgeries.  He begins school for the very first time when he’s entering 5th grade and faces many challenges.

Wonder taught us to be kind to others regardless of how people look and everyone should be treated equally. We read the book first and then watched the movie. Along with the reading the book and viewing the movie, we actually connected with a real-live “Wonder”, Megan Brown!

Last month, our class got to “hangout” with an awesome girl named Megan Brown.  She was born with similar birth defects as August Pullman.  We got to interview her while we were at school and she was in her home in Michigan.  Megan told us she had about 25 surgeries, but still does not live with a typical face. However, our class didn’t even think her face looked bad.  She was very kind to us and answered all of our questions.  Megan has a twin sister and they do not look alike.  Unfortunately, she got bullied in school which made her sad.  It was super fun to hangout with Megan and get to talk about her reality.

Unusual Homework by Sophia

Since the first week in December, our class has been given unusual homework.  It’s nothing like a normal 4th grade class would be given.  But then again, we’re not a normal 4th grade class.  Our teachers think it would be better for us to complete a 2-page packet, which they call a spiral, each week for math.  It contains 16 math problems with only the math we learned so far.  That way it’s more of a review and we won’t forget anything.  I think it's better this way too!  Although we might get a sheet due the next day for spelling or something and of course we always have our reading response journal due each week as well.

Our reading response journal is used for what we read each week.  We have to write a full-page summary of the book or chapter we read that week.  Then we have to draw a FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATION of what we wrote about.  Yeah, drawing a picture for 4th grade homework?! DEFINITELY not your average 4th grade homework.

I explained to you that our homework is pretty unusual.  But sometimes unusual is good.  I like this new homework style, do you?  Many people in my class agree with me and believe this new homework method is cool and useful.  We’re reviewing, but it’s less homework and less stressful.  So I’ve got a question for you...do you think ALL grades and schools should have homework the way our unique classroom does?