Reading and Writing up a storm

This morning we had some time to do sustained silent reading of our novel. We found out that the word sustained means maintained or continuous without interruption. We enjoyed the chance to read in class and really found it hard to stop when it was time to write our summaries. We talked about the parts of a summary and remembered that a summary retells a story or text in a short way using the main ideas. We had to think about who (the characters in our story), the what (plot and what is happening) and the setting (where is the story mostly told).

We brainstormed under these headings and then tried to put our planning into sentences that made sense. Some of us had a chance to share our summaries. We are thinking about ways to start our writing all the time to make it interesting.

After our novel study time was over we looked at using sizzling starts to make our writing more interesting. We wanted to see if authors also use interesting beginnings to draw the reader in. We got into groups and began searching for sizzling starts. Some of the novels had wonderful beginnings to the book or the chapter. Others were not as well written. We chose the best sentences and then shared them. Some of us used these to write our own sizzling starts.