On Monday, students will find out what animals they are going to be researching.  They gave me a list of their top three choices.  Students will be put into groups.  We will be heading up to the computer lab to do some of our research. 
Here are some links for students will use-
A kid-friendly search engine- just type in the animal's name!
Critter Corner
National Geographic for Kids
Kids' Biology
Enchanted Learning
DNR Wildlife Species

We have been learning to recognize homophones and practicing using them correctly.  After reading the book Dear Deer students worked with a partner to make a poster for our classroom showing the difference between the two homophones.  They had a wonderful time designing the poster and looking at others displayed in the room.

Here (not hear) are a few examples.  If you can think of other pairs (not pears) we would love to hear (not here) from you (not ewe)!

Some students may want to take advantage of this Haiku Contest.  We have some awesome poets in our room.  Scholastic Book Club has a contest for writing a springtime Haiku.  As a reminder, an Haiku poem is only three lines with 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second line and five again in the third line.  They do not need to rhyme.  Poems are due May 10th!

Ten winners will receive $100 savings bond plus a 5 book summer reading collection!

You need to include with your child's poem your child's name and home address, my name (Lindsey Ellis), school name (R.R.O Elementary),  address.(4859 Knudsen St., Montague, MI 49437), and phone number (231) 894-9018

      Before we begin reading the story What Do Illustrators Do?, we learned some new vocabulary words and added them to our vocabulary vine.  We played some games to practice their meanings.  If you want to play those games again, click here.  Students had a lot of fun playing them today.
     Most of us have our introductions written to our essays.  Tomorrow we will begin working on writing angled mini stories to make our position even stronger.  Students are blowing me away by their ideas and their strong opinion statements.  I am excited to see what they write for their mini stories.

If you would like to order a yearbook, you can go here and select Oehrli Elementary School from the list.  They cost $8.00.

We just finished the story The Jones Family Express by Javaka Steptoe today.  While we enjoyed the incredible illustrations and the rich story, we practiced making inferences.  When students have to make inferences, they are being asked to put many clues together from the story and their personal experiences to answer a question.  Because good authors show and not tell, students often have to infer.  Authors don't just want to write "the girl is sad."  They would rather show their readers by writing, "big splashy tears ran down the girl's cheeks and landed in a pool on the table as she looked at her lifeless dog."
    Inferring is definitely a higher level thinking and because of this, students are not able to go back into the text and highlight the exact answer.  The answer comes from putting many pieces of the text together with their own knowledge.  Students have to also explain evidence of their answers.  How do you know the girl is sad?  What evidence do you have?
    Have your child retell you the story of The Jones Family Express and then have them check out this website that helps with our vocabulary words.

After the students came back into the room from specials, they went on a hunt for containers of colorful play-doh.  They were good hunters and found them in no time.  After every one found one, we broke out the play-doh toys and had a few minutes of fun.