Core ELA Time

Since our focus is on Narrative writing, we are reading books and stories that are also powerful narratives to back up our writing conversations and learning.  We are  learning skills that will help us with our own narrative writing as well.

The skills we have learned so far are:

• How to infer Character Traits using background knowledge and text clues to support our inferences.  I usually use a formula called BK+TC = I (Background Knowledge + Text Clues = Inference) to help students with making inferences.  Inferring means reading between the lines.  It is a tough skill, but students can do this very well! 
• What the 5 Story Elements are: Plot, Character, Conflict, Theme, and Setting. 
• What Plot even is- it is the action in the story.  There is an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and conclusion.  These are all vocabulary terms that students need to learn and know.  We talked about mapping the plot of a story using a map, and how stories may not always follow the map, such as our chapter book, Because of Mr. Terupt.  The more complex a story, the more it does not follow that generic map.  The typical plot map is pictured here: 

Books we have read this week: 

• The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson to help us with plot mapping. 

Where we are going next week: 

• I am going to be exposing students to other forms of narratives, so I will show them blogging, podcasts, video stories, Reader's Theater, and more.  
• We will continue to learn about plot and mapping. 
• We will start talking about perspective and Point of View - 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.  Also who the narrator is and their relation to the story.