"Deep Thinking" The kids return to our 4th Grade school routine.
A nice person in our community donated to a program called NIE or Newspapers in Education that allows a teacher to get a class set of newspapers. It is so wonderful to have this resource. I get a class set once a week.
Newspapers are an essential tool for helping kids learn to find non-fiction facts, apply past knowledge, and connect to the world.
The kids found the 5 Ws, underlined, highlighted, cut out, and glued the article on to a loose leaf page. These are a lot of tools used strategically. It was a good exercise for them to see how far they have come this year and what they can accomplish in a 1/2 hour.
The focus of the questions is being able to understand the central idea in a text is a key to comprehension. It takes a lot of practice. They have really learned that in this format central ideas are the first paragraph of a news story.