Sheila Turnage

Sheila Turnage will talk with TES 4th graders on Tuesday, November 13. Ask your student what he/she learned about the writing process from our guest author.

"Sheila Turnage lives on a farm in North Carolina with her husband, a blind dog and an ill-tempered cat.  A native North Carolinian, she's spent most of her life surrounded by the poetry and humor of rural NC. She writes books, articles and poems, and enjoys writing about the South in general and NC in particular. Her books include Compass American Guides: North Carolina and Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Three Times Lucky is her first novel for kids. It's set in the fictitious town of Tupelo Landing, North Carolina - population 148 minus one (murder)."                                   

                                         -From Amazon.com 

                                        -information provided by author

TES Book Fair

Monday, November 12

Cardinal Lanes Book Talk in our classroom

Monday, November 19 from 12:30-1:00
Our class will visit the Book Fair.
Please send in money if you wish.

Will's Book Talk

The Twits by Roald Dahl

At the beginning of the story, Mr. Twit and Mrs. Twit do a lot of pranks on each other. Every Tuesday and Thursday, they have bird pie. They love bird pie. Mr. Twit puts the stickiest glue on the tree because when the birds sit on the branches and their feet get stuck, Mr. Twit shoots the birds. The couple has a family of monkeys. They make them sit on their heads all day. The monkeys do not like standing on their heads. They speak African, and they try to tell the birds not to sit on the branches. One day, an African bird came across the yards and the monkeys yelled at the bird. They said to tell all the birds to not sit on the tree and to sit on the monkey's cage. It was Tuesday, and he saw all the birds sitting on the cage. He got so angry! The next day, he put the glue on the monkey's cage. Then all the birds sat on the tree. Now he was really angry. They monkeys decided to do a prank. You will have to read the book to find out more.

Keith's Book Talk

I read Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw by Jeff Kinney. In fact, I'm reading the whole series. The main character is Greg H. He is a wimpy kid. Wimpy means he can't stand up for himself. I like Greg because he's funny and he's always getting himself embarrassed. When you read the books, you're actually reading his diary. So you read about his day, feelings, emotions, friends, and family. You also see his funny pictures. The Last Straw is about when Greg's dad tries to send Greg to military school. It's really funny. I highly recommend it.

North Carolina

In addition to all of our research about the candidates and the election, we are still working on learning more about our state. This week we are going to focus on famous sites in each region. We are using the VisitNC website to help us search by region for interesting places that are an important part of our cultural heritage. Mr. Merritt showed the class how to research the Alamance Battlefield and to write some important facts about it from the website. After the election, we will look again at the three branches of the North Carolina government and update our prior knowledge and learn a bit about our newly elected officials. From there, we will do research on some of the major industries that drive our state economy, as well as our agricultural resources. 

Parent Workshop

I wanted to share information with you about Celebrate Calm, a workshop offered by the Fletcher School's Rankin Institute. They offer a great variety of parent and educator workshops throughout the year. I've been to many of them through the years and have always been impressed with the quality of the speakers and program. I have heard that this is supposed to be an especially great program, and I'm planning to attend.

Celebrate Calm This exciting workshop, perfect for parents and teachers of all ages, will give strategies to stop power struggles; eliminate defiance, disrespect, and sibling fights; improve focus, attention, and behavior in school; as well as create stress-free mornings, homework time, and bedtime. Registration is required.  We are offering this workshop two different times: To register for the morning session from 8:30am - 10:30am, please click HERE. To register for the evening session from 7:00pm - 9:00pm, please click HERE.

Where & When The Fletcher School 8500 Sardis Road Charlotte, North Carolina 28270 Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Faith Studies Homework

Mr. Burton asked me to post this on our blog:

This week in Faith Studies we are studying the adventures of the prophet Elijah. We'll be looking at 1 Kings 16-19 in The Action Bible. Please feel free to read the story with your children at home. 

Below you will find 25 keywords from the story. For our next class on November 12, students need to create a song that would explain Elijah's story to someone who had not heard it before. They do not need to use all the words in the list (some of them have even created their own list!) but can feel free to use the list as a starting point. 

Words for song

1. kingdom
2. Israel
3. Ahab
4. Jezebel
5. Baal
6. queen
7. temples
8. Elijah
9. drought
10. ravens
11. Obadiah
12. widow
13. famine
14. Mount Carmel
15. bulls
16. fire
17. prophets
18. lightning
19. rain
20. miracle
21. despair
22. mountain
23. earthquake
24. storm
25. whisper