A Little Persuasion...

I am so glad this week is over!  STAAR Writing is done, my ankle is healing, and my quarters will return ready to work on Monday!  (positive thoughts, positive thoughts...)  I did have a couple of very flattering job opportunities the last couple of days and it really ended my week well.  But I'm still in the prime of my "I love the classroom" attitude and right now, it's the best choice for me, I think.

Yesterday, my quarters started their Persuasion Lapbooks.  They created the foldables, glued them into their lapbooks, and labeled them.  Fridays usually means our weekly assessments.  However, we had too much testing this week and no new material, so our Friday routine changed.

Today, we read a couple of persuasive texts.  One came with our reading series and the other was Click, Clack, Moo:   Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin.  (Experience in primary always comes in handy!!)  We completed several anchor charts and the quarters were really into it!  My partner said that, yesterday, quarters were talking about persuasion during Math! Woohoo!!

Our first anchor chart covered the text purpose and text features.  Quarters copied this information into their lapbooks.

We then talked and charted persuasive text organization.

They also put words that indicate persuasive text into their lapbooks.  As we read Click, Clack, Moo, we listed sentences that indicated where theses words would be appropriate on sticky notes.

Finally, they charted possible STAAR Reading Question Stems and put those into the lapbooks.

 It's nice to tie in things like author's purpose and main idea into stems about a persuasive essay.

I plan to grade their lapbooks this weekend and I will try to post pics of those books.  We sure had fun!  I'll try anything to help them commit new knowledge to memory!

In the spirit of trying new things, and not succeeding a possibility, I end with another Potter quote (you're surprised I'm sure!):

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.” --JK Rowling

So, I gotta try...Rowling said so...