October 1st...Getting ready for Halloween!!!

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg is a great book for teaching writing...especially for the month of Halloween!  I have the portfolio version as well as the book version so I decided to put the portfolio on a bulletin board to leave up all month for inspiration.  I cannot wait for the new version that comes out October 25th.

From BarnesandNoble.com:

An inspired collection of short stories by an all-star cast of best-selling storytellers based on the thought-provoking illustrations in Chris Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.
 
For more than twenty-five years, the illustrations in the extraordinaryMysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg have intrigued and entertained readers of all ages. Thousands of children have been inspired to weave their own stories to go with these enigmatic pictures. Now we’ve asked some of our very best storytellers to spin the tales. Enter The Chronicles of Harris Burdick to gather this incredible compendium of stories: mysterious, funny, creepy, poignant, these are tales you won’t soon forget.
 
This inspired collection of short stories features many remarkable, best-selling authors in the worlds of both adult and children's literature: Sherman Alexie, M.T. Anderson, Kate DiCamillo, Cory Doctorow, Jules Feiffer, Stephen King, Tabitha King, Lois Lowry, Gregory Maguire, Walter Dean Myers, Linda Sue Park, Louis Sachar, Jon Scieszka, Lemony Snicket, and Chris Van Allsburg himself.
     Van Allsburg's Harris Burdick illustrations have evoked such wonderment and imagination since Harris Burdick's original publication in 1984; many have speculated or have woven their own stories to go with his images. More than ever, the illustrations send off their eerie call for text and continue to compel and pick at the reader's brain for a backstory—a threaded tale behind the image. In this book, we've collected some of the best storytellers to spin them.

What's Been Going on in 4th Grade Isla Jamestown!

So much going on that it is hard to get to do the fun things I enjoy like searching blogs, pinteresting, and face book!  This weekend I hope to get caught up enough that life gets sort of back to normal!  Since I have been a fourth grade teacher, we have done quite a bit of work in the classroom.  I am sharing some pictures of some of the fun activities that we have been doing.  Most of them I found while surfing through blogs and the web in general.  Not sure where some of them came from because I would find something interesting and just save it to use (hopefully) later.  I would love to give the credit where credit is due...if any of these is your idea, please let me know.

This is a Beth Newingham idea!  I love her and ALL of her ideas.  We are waiting for postcards from everywhere!  Mrs. Newingham's website

This is a CRISS strategy.  A missing person's poster to help with inferring character traits.

We read The OK Book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and wrote about the things we were ok at and the things we were fabulous at.

I love Jack Prelutsky...we read Green Giant to get an idea about developing a mind movie when we do our own writing.  The kids kept their eyes closed while I read the poem aloud and then drew what they saw in their minds.  

To practice writing with details, we picked the favorite part of our favorite birthday ever and wrote with details to describe that one favorite part!  This was a wonderful idea from my new teammates!

This is one of my favorites!

I love this one!  This student's favorite part of her favorite birthday was the ring that her dad got for her!

A little book shopping...

So I am in Ottawa for my last weekend.  I leave next week for home.  After the movie today, Joe and I went by Chapter's.  I found some nice bargain books but I came across a book that I had never heard of and it is fabulous!  It's called The Black Book of Colors by Menena Cottin and Rosana Faria.  The whole book has a black background but it talks about different colors on each page...how they sound, or smell, or taste, or feel.  The book is also written in Braille.  The cool thing to me is that after each color is described, the next page is embossed with an image.  For example, the description of red included as tart as a strawberry so the next page had embossed strawberries on it.  I love it and am already thinking of ways I might use it in my class next year!

I can't figure out how to link Barnes and Noble here so you can see a description, but they do have it!