Mrs. Riemenschneider's Classroom

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Walkathon News - Shine Like Stars!

Next week is it! Teachers are so excited about the opportunity for students to serve our neighbors around the world that we have cancelled afternoon classes Friday, Sept. 28 for students to participate in the Walkathon. Students, have you talked to a sponsor(s)? Have you decided on a self-pledge? Proceeds will go toward creating School kits as part of our Christmas Service project. Students will have a second opportunity to serve as we gather school items and pack the kits later in the second semester. Remember:

Dress in PE style clothing to come to school Friday: Spirit wear or Christian t-shirt, shorts/sweats, good walking/running shoes!!

Pledges and pledge sheets are due Oct. 5

Check out the kits we will make: LWR School Kits

English Class

After our first grammar unit, our English class has shifted to writing. Our first creative writing project was a fractured fairytale. Students took inspiration from childhood favorite tales but put their own "twist" to characters, setting, and plot. Since creativity in storytelling was a focus, less emphasis was put on proofreading errors. Sentence fragments were intentionally used to create the feel of an oral tale and a casual tone. A great introduction to tone and author's purpose in our Literature study! (Note the fragment I used). Read our stories on Kidblog using the Student Blog tab above. Students had some very clever ideas. Please share your comments, too!

Our second writing project is a formal paper, a character sketch. We used the movie, The Prince and the Pauper, for a character study, as we had read a character sketch of it's author, Mark Twain. This is a process writing project, meaning we take the writing through the formal steps of brainstorming/prewriting, drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing. Our writing focus is paragraph structure and students are learning to compose at the computer. As this is an in depth writing assignment, the final paper is assessed as a test grade in English. First drafts are due Monday in hardcopy.