Adventures with Miss B

Fantasy creatures feature in LOTS of stories we love reading, from Kindergarten picture books up to young adult fantasy  / adventure novels. They are used by authors to help create movies in your mind of fantastical creatures with extraordinary features and powers. 

Good writers use descriptive phrases, noun groups, similes and other devices to describe these creatures.

Good readers conjure up vivid images in their mind of how the creature looks and acts.

Here is a POPPLET Miss B made about the sleek from ‘Song For A Scarlet Runner’.

Now it’s your turn to use descriptive phrases!

Choose one ( or ALL! ) of the links below to visit boards where you can add descriptive words and phrases about how these fantasy creatures look and how they might act and move. 

Shimmering light!

Beware the deep!

Is it a tiger?

UFO sighting?

This term we are learning how to Synthesise when we read. Synthesising is when your thinking changes or evolves as you read. 

You can visit the website “Into the book” to complete an activity about Synthesising.

Step 1: Go to the website and click ‘Kids’ (skip login)

Step 2: In the Students Area click ‘Synthesising’. Click ‘Part Part Whole’.

Step 2: Listen to the Introduction and Watch the video.

Step 3: Click ‘Try it Yourself’ and do the activity. Repeat with different starting images!

Now that you know the steps, you can visit the site and get started!

Click the image below!

This term in science we will be learning all about BREAD.

One of the most important ingredients in bread is flour. But what is flour, where does it come from and how is it made.

Flour is made from grinding up different grains. The most commonly used grain for bread is WHEAT.

Add to the forum something you already know about WHEAT, GRAINS and/or FLOUR. 

[forum:5838]

Wheat all starts with a grain. Let’s go read about a grain! Read carefully, and take notes in your book if you need to.

You will be asked to write something you learned on this blog! CLICK HERE!

Let’s now look at the farming process. Click the link below to see how wheat is farmed. Once again, read carefully.

CLICK HERE!

Now that you have learnt about what grain is and the farming of grain, you can add to the forum below and share some new knowledge. 

[forum:5839]

Learning Intention: We are learning to determine what is important when we read and what is just interesting.

We can’t possibly remember everything we read. Our brains are like a sieve, sifting  what is important, what is just interesting and what we don’t need to remember at all.

Image courtesy of www.webstaurantstore.com 

You can use a T chart to help ‘sort’ information into things that is

important (crucial, essential, significant, notable)

and things that are just

interesting (funny, weird, strange, unheard of).

But before you read, you need to know WHY it is going to be important. Does it help you to do something? Do you need to write about the main idea? Are you looking for specific information?

Attached below is an article called ‘Get Active Each day’. Let’s assume you are reading it to find out HOW you can be active each day.

You will remember that reason when you are reading the article and looking for what is important to WHY you are reading it, and what is just interesting.

You can use a T chart to sort your points, like the student did in this photograph:

Image courtesy of http://lifein4b.blogspot.com.au/

Here is the text “Get Active Each Day” Have a go trying to SORT the information into ‘Interesting’ and ‘Important’!

How about you write a comment below sharing:

1 IMPORTANT fact and 1 INTERESTING fact from the article?

Learning Intention: We are learning to identify the theme of the books we read.

Here are some of the most common themes found in non fiction books.

Image courtesy of primarypunch.blogspot.com.au

Watch these two videos that discuss the common themes of literary texts and some of the lessons that the characters and readers learn along the way. 

Visit this site to make a word cloud of all the themes you know are in stories and texts! Save your word cloud to the desktop and include your names as the title.

Finished early? Write a comment telling me a book you know that has one of the 12 most common themes.

Set out your comment like this:

Hi Miss B,

Theme: Courage

Text: Sebby Stee, the Garbos and Me

Evidence: Mikey tries to be brave when he ventures out with his older brother to steal the garbo’s beer. He also shows courage when he eventually stands up to his older brother.

From Bosco

Every book we read has a theme,  sometimes more than one! But what is the theme?

Image courtesy of  minds-in-bloom.com

The ‘theme’ is the message that the author is trying to communicate with the reader.

Authors use clues to show us the theme, so we need to be able to infer the underlying messages and topics.

Some people might confuse theme with the plot of a story. But the plot of story refers to something to what the author is actually writing about. The plot of the story includes the characters, the setting, the events—these are things that are stated in the text.

Beneath the novel’s surface lies its true meaning, or its theme.  A  theme usually relates to the author’s statement or opinion on the topic. It’s an idea that connects the whole story.

Usually the theme of the story can be inferred from the characters themselves. The character’s thoughts, feelings and emotions, reflections and discoveries. What they learn throughout their experiences can give the readers an idea of the theme running throughout the story.

For instance, the plot of Harry Potter is based on the Wizarding World and his time at Hogwarts throughout his teenage years. But the story itself has many themes—friendship, love, sacrifice, good versus evil.

Fairy tales and fables often have obvious themes with a matching life lesson or moral. In Aesop’s fable “The Hare and The Tortoise”, the moral of the story is ‘Slow and Steady Wins the Race’. The ‘theme’ of  ”The Hare and The Tortoise” is PERSISTENCE. 

Don’t know the  ”The Hare and The Tortoise” fable? Click here to go read it!

Here are some other of Aesop’s Fables for you to go and watch / read.

Can you work out the moral of the story and the theme? 

The Dog and the Wolf

The Wind and the Sun

The Eagle and the Arrow

The Lion and The Mouse

The Hare with Many Friends

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

The Ant and the Grasshopper

What books have you read that have a theme? What were the themes in your books? Leave a comment and let us know!

Our focus strategy this week is Making Inferences.

We remember that TEXT CLUES + BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE = INFERENCE

Authors use inference to SHOW their readers more information about the setting ( eg: weather, mood) and the characters (opinions, emotions).

Let’s practice the skill of inferring.

1. Click HERE to guess words and phrases based on clues.

2. Click HERE to play a game using inferring.

3.  Click HERE to play Making Inferences Battleships!

Being a fluent reader means you read smoothly with expression and correct

phrasing. You read at a suitable pace, paying attention to punctuation

marks. 

In 5/6J – on average you should be reading between 100 and 130 words per minute aloud, and even more if

you read silently.

Multiply your age by 10, that gives you an indication of your oral reading rate of words per minute. 

Today we will test your silent reading skill. The texts are quite hard, aimed at high school students.

The aim is not to read too fast that you can’t remember anything you just read. After the

test you will be asked some comprehension questions!

Click the link below to go to the reading speed tester. You can read more than one text, when you

start again you get a different text. 

Click here to find your score!

Our focus strategy at the moment is learning to form a synthesis. 

Synthesising is one of the hardest comprehension skills because to do it you need to ask

questions, infer, make connections, use your background knowledge and summarise!  

Phew!

Our reading groups tasks this week is to form a synthesis on our much-loved book

“Poppy Comes Home”.

Use the planning page to help you fill out the Story cube at Cube Creator.

This term we have been looking at Information Reports. We have discovered that information reports feature

facts grouped together into categories. 

Information reports feature a lot of technical language. Technical language is words and phrases specific to

the topic that are not used very often in everyday conversation. 

This week in reading groups we will be reading a text at studyladder.com.au called ‘How Do Plants and

Animals Survive in the Desert’. Let’s see if this information report has lots of technical language or just topic

language. 

Click the image below to visit www.studyladder.com.au and click on your set tasks to see this report.