Life in Early Arizona

We recently finished our study of cultures in prehistoric Arizona. We focused on the Mogollon, Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi), and Hohokam cultures. As our final project, students wrote first-person narratives from the perspective of a child in one of those cultures. They created foldables that included interesting facts about their culture, a narrative about a day-in-the-life of a child in that culture, a diagram of their home based on research, and a self-portrait that included cultural elements. They turned out great! Here are a few of my favorites!

Silent E

During spelling, we learned that a silent final E has 5 jobs.

Job 1: Silent final E makes a vowel say it's 2nd sound (it's name).

Job 2: English words do not end in V or U, so add an E.

Job 3: Silent final E makes a C say "s" and a G say "j."

Job 4: Silent final E makes every syllable have a vowel.

Job 5: Silent final E has no job - He's just hanging out!

Watch this video. Which job of E is it describing?

The Power of Persuasion

Our class recently wrote a letter to our principal asking him to allow our class to watch the videos posted on our class website on our school computers. Follow the link below to see the letter.

Can you identify the topic, author's position, author's purpose, and supporting evidence?

Our Persuasive Letter

Dialogue Journals

Dialogue journals waiting to be read and replied to on Sunday night

We use dialogue journals to practice writing friendly letters and to develop student-teacher relationships. My students and I write notes back and forth to each other throughout the year and it gives me a chance to really get to know each one of them on a more personal level. It also allows me to assess their writing growth as the year goes on and to watch as their punctuation and spelling improves and their ability to write using the friendly letter format with appropriate ideas/content develops. 

An example of our letters back and forth  (student's name has been blurred)