From the Pages to the Screen

With the holiday movie season fast approaching, there are some new movies that have come out that are based on children's books and there seem to be more and more every year. Last year there were movies such as City of Ember and Coraline, this year the movies, Where the Wild Things Are, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and The Vampire's Assistant are all based off of popular children's or teen books. When we watch movies that are based on books, there always seems to be several differences between them. What is your opinion about books that are made into movies? Do you feel that they are generally better or worse than the books that they have came from?
If you were a big movie producer and you needed to find the next great Hollywood blockbuster, what book or book(s) would you want to make a movie based on it? Why would you chose it and what makes you think it would be a hit with kids?

Image from www.empireonline.com

Independent Reading

During reading class, we are working on building stamina during our independent reading time. We are currently up to 20 minutes. Why do you think that it's important to be able to build stamina while you are reading independently? I have been keeping a journal of the books each of you have been reading and am noticing that some of you are changing books quite often. Starting at the new nine weeks, I will be holding reading conferences with you to discuss some of your strategies during reading and you will be setting reading goals as well. Tell me, what have you been reading during this time? What is one thing that you can make a connection with as you are reading your current book?

Photo from: www.cheapusedbooksonline.net

International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Ahoy mateys! Tomorrow is the official "Talk Like a Pirate Day". To celebrate, our reading group has rewritten some of our favorite nursery rhymes using some of our newly acquired "pirate vocabularies" - arrrr...don't worry it's all clean. Here are our examples of the newly piratized nursery rhymes! Feel free to post ye own rhyme but keep it clean, or we'll make ye walk the plank, you scalywag.

Dexter the Tough

We have just finished reading the novel, Dexter the Tough. This is a nominee for the 2009 William Allen White Award. Let me know what you think about the novel? Is this a good nominee? Do you think others your age would like it? Tell me your opinion of the book. Finally, I would like you to MAKE CONNECTIONS with the book in some way. We have been taking about making connections in whole group.

OSCAR begins again!

Well, it's a new year of school and with it brings another great OSCAR reading group. This summer has been a very busy one for me that included a lot of reading, some for entertainment and some to learn information from. I'd like to get to know all of my new readers a little bit better. Tell me some about your reading habits:

- What types of books do you like to read most often?
- What has been your favorite book that you've ever read?
- Where in your house, is your favorite place to read?

Please leave a comment answering these questions in complete sentences and give any other information that you'd like to about reading. Reading is a lot of fun, it's time to GET HOOKED ON READING.

Another Year of OSCAR

Another year of OSCAR Reading Groups are now over, and you are ready to move on to the next year of your schooling at the middle school. Regarding your 5th grade OSCAR experience, what are thoughts? Did you like the novels that we read during our literature circle times and are there some that we should skip for next year? What did you think about the read alouds that we had this year, did you enjoy them and did they hold your interest?
We had the opportunity to create, collaborate, and share many different things about our reading through the use of technology. Did you like using the technology? We used blogs, wikis, made movies, created comics, characters, and communicated with other classes. What was your favorite thing to do? If you could be in our reading group next year, what would you be the most excited about using?
Lastly, what was your over all opinion of your 5th grade OSCAR class? What do you wish could have been different? What would you keep the same for next year?
Thanks for all of your meaningful input and thoughtful comments as we have progressed throught the year.

Read Aloud - Savvy

We have just finished the novel, Savvy, by Ingrid Law. We have had several good discussions about this novel in class and you've had a chance to do some predicting and reflecting in your journals as well. We even emailed, the author, Ingrid Law, herself because we were curious as to why she chose Salina as a setting for the story. Now that we've completed this story, I want to know, what did you think of the book? Let's hear your opinion. Do you have "I Wonder" statements about what we've read aloud together? If you could ask some questions of the author, what would they be? We've had the discussion about the author's use of similes in the story, can you use the author's writing style to come up with a description of Savvy by using your own similes?

Below is the Wordle that we created for the novel. You may want to click on it to get a bigger view of it. The words that are biggest are those that you felt were the most important. Is there any thing about the Wordle that surprises you?