After we took some time to read samples of real kids' MCAS tests from years past, you had some questions.

There were parts of these students' stories that stuck with you.  That's because these students are good writers.  They know tricks to make their writing not just correct, but interesting.  These are the kids who are earning 5 out of 6 points and 6 out of 6 points on their revisions.

Here are the phrases you thought were the most interesting, and things you want to improve in your own writing.  We did a lot of work on those last two (check the comic strips you wrote for dialogue and our Word Wall for interesting words) and we will definitely work more on those top 4 over the next 2 weeks!

One way to help you remember and understand things you read (and learn) is to think about how they are the same and how they area different.  

In fourth grade, we call this comparing (telling how things are the same) and contrasting (telling how things are different).

The way to take notes on things you are comparing and contrasting is to draw a Venn diagram, like the ones in these pictures.  You can draw circles, but I like rectangles better because they give me more room to write. 

Notice that differences are listed under the title, and similarities are listed in the middle, under "both."

Taking the time to organize what you are noticing this way will help you later on when it's time to write sentences that have transition words!

I'd like to introduce our second guest blogger, Shantal!  Shantal did a nice job summarizing a book she read called Behind the Scenes.

This is what people use to make movies. People use screen tricks to the movie looks like it's real. Lighting equipment is very important because you can't make a movie without it. Foley Artists help make sound effects sound real. They also work in a Foley Artist room. Those are the things used to make a movie.

I'm pleased to announce our first, but certainly not the last, fourth grade "guest blogger" for this year:  Brodie!  Brodie read Romare Bearden and did a great job summarizing this nonfiction text.  If you like art and you think you'd like to be an artist some day, check out this book!

An artist named Romare Bearden .Romare made many paintings some were about family.Romare had many family travels to get away from segregation. An artist begins for Romare to set a goal to be a good artist.Romare was searching for a voice because he had many jobs before he was an artist.When he became an artist exploring new horizons.Romare liked music such as jazz.And he found a new art were you pierce it together which is called a collage so he liked this new art.That's what I know about Romare Bearden.

By:  Brodie

I'm excited to announce that later this month we will have 4 guest bloggers write their own posts and with a little help, upload them to this blog.  Even more exciting is that those guest bloggers will be between the ages of 9 and 11 years old.  That's right, our guest bloggers will be 4 of you fourth graders!

We have been working on writing summaries of the books we're reading in class, and each of our 4 reading groups are in competition to get the highest mark on their summaries.  I've already chosen 2 winners.  One has been announced today, and the other will be announced on Tuesday.  The remaining 2 winners will be announced later next week.  We will have one guest blog post each week before February vacation. 

If you win, and you would like your school photo* posted with your summary, bring in a copy, along with a signed note from your parent granting me permission to scan it and post it here on this blog. 

*If you don't have a school photo, a head shot with any plain colored background is fine. 

Here are the transition words we've used during our Morning Meeting activity this month.  

You've learned to add these words to your ideas and combine sentences so they way they go together is clearer.

Different transition words are used for different types of information.  You might need a transition word to show:

1.  How things are the same
2.  How things are different
3.  The order in which things happened
4.  That one thing made another thing happen
5.  A summary of several details

Can you give an example of which word goes with which type?  Here's an example:

In conclusion is used for a summary of several details.

When you do your Reading MCAS practice homework, be sure to ANSWER the question with the steps you've learned in class!

If you are following the steps but you are still not sure what the answer to the question is, you should:
1.  Reread the question
2.  Reread the selection
3.  Think
4.  Repeat!

We have been working on our responses to reading, also known as the MCAS Open Response.  Each week we review the ANSWER method to answering these questions completely, and you each set a goal to increase your score by including one more detail than the week before.

Our class's goal is to help each other so that no one has fewer than 3 correct detail sentences. 

Currently (after correcting Storms) there are only 6 students who are still scoring under 3.

Do you have any advice for those kids who only need one

Summaries are useful for quickly learning what a longer text is about, since they are much shorter.

When you write a summary of a nonfiction article, use the text features to help you.  Write the main idea of the whole article in once sentence.  Often the title will help you with that. 

Then, see if the headings will help you take notes.  If they don't, read the first and last sentence of each paragraph to find the topic of each paragraph.  Write the topics in note form. 

Finally, write sentences using the words in a way that makes sense.  Think about what the author wanted you to know about each topic to form main idea sentences. 

Think about Diggin Dirt.  Of course the topic is dirt.  What is the author mostly teaching you about dirt? 

Remember, the topic is one or two words.  The main idea is a complete sentence that tells about the topic.

Can you match one of the following topics to the main idea?

a.  Birds
b.  Landforms
c.  Problem Solving

1.  The Northeast Region has several different types of landforms.
2.  You can solve some math problems using bar models.
3.  Birds have several characterstics that are unique to