ELA Kitchen Update

Chris Van Allsburg is also an illustrator! We have noticed how intricate and detailed his drawings are. We have also noticed that he chooses to use black and white frequently.

This week in Reading Workshop, we have kicked off our author study on Chris Van Allsburg. Today, we explored his website, learning about his writing life. We discussed that Chets Creek students study authors to study author's craft, apply our knowledge of their craft to our own writing, understand how life experiences affect writing, and gain a deeper understanding of process and content through shared experiences. When we read the same books as our classmates and engage in discussions about them, we become a community of readers!



Chris Van Allsburg writes modern fantasy. Later this week, we will explore the features of modern fantasy and discuss how features of a text can help us figure out which genre the story is. We will also be exploring theme. Theme is the central idea of the story. When trying to find a theme, we ask ourselves, "What is the author trying to say or teach?", or, "What is the author trying to get the reader to think about?"

Readers, we encourage you to explore www.chrisvanallsburg.com to learn more about the books we are reading and Van Allsburg's writing life! Tell us some interesting facts you have learned about Chris Van Allsburg.

In Writing Workshop this week, we are learning a strategy to help us when we write to a prompt.This will help us prepare for our writing test this spring! Remember that the writing test is no different from the things we have learned in writing workshop! The strategy is called R-U-P-R.

R- Read the prompt.
U- Underline the topic, audience, purpose, and format.
P- Plan your writing.
R- Reread, edit, and revise your writing.

We are also discussing how to elaborate on an idea. When we write to a prompt, we need to make sure we stay on topic and choose one particular part of our story to elaborate on.

Writers... How do you feel about the RUPR strategy? How is it helping you? Do you think that using the RUPR strategy will help you when writing to a prompt on the test?