Friday, October 4, 2013

SWINDLE, by Gordon Korman

Swindle, by Gordon Korman.
Review by Leo M., 6th Grader

Swindle, by Gordon Korman, is a realistic fiction book.  It is filled with action and a little bit of mystery.  When Griffin and his friend Ben find a unique baseball card, they think it will be the answer to a huge problem they have.  See, Ben might have to move from his hometown and his friends, but maybe the money from the sale of this unique card might help his family out enough so they won't have to move.

They decide to take the card to a shop to sell it, which they do, for $120.00. Then they see the guy who bought it from him on TV, being interviewed.  He's talking about how the card is worth a lot of money and will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. This makes the boys realize that they need to pull off the ultimate heist.

Will they get back what's truly theirs, or does S. Wendell get away with swindling an eleven year old kid out of an incredibly valuable card?

Read the book to find out!

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

What? How is it already October?!

Holy Cow!  It seems like yesterday we were bemoaning the fact that summer was ending, and here we are, already wrapping up our first six weeks! I guess time flies even faster when you're being productive along with having fun...

This week we've had quite a few people finishing up long books, and we're discussing how to write good book recommendations. I love this phase of our "class vibe" development, because as more of us finish books, more books are shared and swapped, and our personal "Books I Want to Read" lists grow longer and longer. An interesting dynamic occurs in a classroom that reads.  We become like a little family and start having these great bonds that are formed over books. When you bond with someone over a shared "book experience," it's a really special thing--and it's so much fun to witness and of which to be a part.  Hopefully before too much longer, we'll be sharing some reviews/blog posts about some of those books here on our classroom blog.

During English, we are continuing to make connections between the books we've read together and the narrative writing process.  We've been discussing the importance of using elaborate details for describing story critical characters, settings and objects, while being careful to not use irrelevant details, simply for the sake of adding more words to our writing. Hopefully next week we'll begin devoting more time to word study--it's just so hard to get it all in during our 100 minutes together!  I swear, sometimes I think the clock goes faster within these four walls...

Today, when the bell rang to go to lunch, and the kids ran out, leaving everything where it landed, I decided to stop, relax, and spend my lunch period doing what I love best...READING!  Those are my blue toes peeking out of the fluffy house slipper flip flops I wear in the classroom--and yep, I'm taking advantage of that wonderful couch!

Have a fantastic rest of the week!

~Mrs. Schauer