Dear Families, 
 
Biography Day was the highlight of our week at school. All of the children did a wonderful job representing the people they read about during biography month. It was fun for us to see them truly become the people they learned about, and their presentations in first person were well done. You can view these by going to 
www.walkerschools.org/fe/biographies.mov 
 
In English, we took a test on plural nouns and we worked on  
recognizing and using possessive nouns correctly. We will have a quiz over possessive noun usage next Tuesday, Nov. 5th. Students continue to work on their fiction stories. They read their stories aloud to each other this week. It really helps to hear the flow and focus of a story when the student reads it aloud. We are working on the endings to stories so it will be satisfying to the reader. The goal is to publish these stories before Thanksgiving. We will also be working on essays in response to literature. This exercise in writing will help prepare our students for the years ahead in writing in response to something read.  
 
A very important part of our daily reading time is reading! Students typically have 30-45 minutes of time for independent reading daily. With a goal of 6-7 grade level books each 9 weeks, reading daily is an important part of the regimen. If your child is absent, he or she needs to include an additional 30 minutes per day that he or she is absent to make up for missed reading time. If you have any questions regarding your child's reading or need help select books on the right level, please let me know.  
 
I really want to encourage families to make reading a part of daily life. Students raised in this environment typically do well in reading and writing. This experience in comprehending books read for pleasure spills over into the content areas of social studies and science. Encourage your child to read a variety of books. Many students read a biography for the first time during October, and what many discovered is that this is a genre they like! 
 
Thanks for reading this weekly blog. I hope you enjoy viewing the biography presentations. 
Have a great weekend! 
 
Until next time, 
 
Karen Persinger