Island of the Blue Dolphins

When Gregory read this a few months ago, I never got around to it. Fast forward to Mother's Day on Manhattan Beach, and while the boys dug in the sand, I almost finished the book. There is a lot of great material to work with . . .

The children saw a red ship arriving with a pair / pear of red sails.

The villagers of Ghalas-at feared the Aleuts would sail / sale away and not pay them fairly for the otter pelts. 

And who doesn't need more practice with their, there and they're!

Their / There / They're weren't many tall trees on the island.

They were afraid the Aleuts would return to their / there / they're island to hunt more otters.

Their / There / They're afraid that the Aleuts will leave without paying them an equal share, so the villagers watch the Aleuts from afar and count the number of pelts they take.

So far, I've worked on homophones, possessive noun forms (and there is ample material here with the dogs' lair and all the other animals mentioned), and coordinating conjunctions. I do have notes on subordinating conjunctions, but I haven't yet added them to the packet. I find the best way to incorporate them is to work with the most well known, time and sequence. Students tend to use when, before and after in their writing naturally. Getting them to understand the structure and add a comma is a first step to introducing the many subordinating conjunctions that exist in the English Language. 

Most of the books I've worked on have been entertaining or delightful. This, however, was not. The part that I took away, and would want my children to take away from reading this story, is how this woman persevered.

When I visited the San Gabriel Mission on my son's field trip this year, lo and behold, a picture of the lone woman of San Nicolas Island. 

The Ballad of Lucy Whipple

Last night I was wandering through the children's room at Vroman's and saw a book titled The Ballad of Lucy Whipple. When I saw it was a Gold Rush adventure, I hesitated about 2 seconds before buying it. The story presents an alternate perspective on those who traveled to the Gold Rush. Quite unlike Master Jack Flagg in By the Great Horn Spoon, Lucy Whipple does not want to leave her home in Massachusetts and embark on this adventure.

I've already read the first chapter to Gregory. It tells the story of a young girl who travels with her mother from Massachusetts to the Gold Rush. Her father has died, she is homesick and very unhappy to be in California, and her mother takes a job working in a boarding house in Lucky Diggins. I can't wait to read Chapter 2.

May 15th

On days when Gregory outright refuses to read, I read to him. This is our pick for now when he tires of The Return of the Indian. So we've gotten through four chapters. Lucy Whipple comes out to California by ship with her mother and younger siblings. Her father has died of pneumonia, and her mother has fulfilled their lifelong dream of heading West. She runs a boarding house for miners in the Gold Rush at a camp called Lucky Diggins. Lucy, who was born California Morning Whipple, has decided to change her name because she finds it ridiculous to be called California now that she lives there. She hates everything about California and writes constantly to her grandparents back home in Massachusetts. Through her letters, the reader has a window into her thoughts.

June ??
Chapter 6, pg. 194 Houghton Mifflin's History of Social Science
Lo and behold, I was reading Gregory's social science book to help him answer questions about how California became a state, and I found an excerpt from The Ballad of Lucy Whipple by Karen Cushman. I haven't read the excerpt yet because I am just at Chapter 11, and this is taken from further on. Last night, while reading, I believe I reached my favorite part of the story. Lucy befriends a "brown man." Actually, he befriends her because he fills her berry buckets for her while she is busy reading. This is the first time she has ever met an African American. She learns about slavery and freedom from him. He calls himself Joe because that's what his slaveowner called all his slaves. Lucy gives him her father's name....Bernard and a new last name: Freedom. I'm eager to see where the story goes next.

While Lucy is busy reading The Count of Monte Cristo, Joe quietly fills her buckets with berries. (adverbial of time and sequence).

12 Punctuation Rules for Fourth Grade & Beyond

I made a few changes to my rule list, mostly to do with formatting. If you are a punctuation expert, you'll notice I left out anything to do with reduced clauses. For example, I think it would be very difficult for fourth graders, who are still struggling with parts of speech and what makes a complete sentence, to understand the following types of structures.

After they hit pay dirt, miners would stake a claim by piling up rocks in four corners.

After hitting pay dirt, miners would stake a claim by piling up rocks in four corners.

I also think that the understanding of when a comma precedes an adverbial clause that follows an independent clause is too confusing. I have to really think about those myself, and it's not really essential to understanding sentence structure. Hence, I left that out.

I'm now formatting my Gold Rush examples in Power Point and will have them up, along with a photo of what the finished product can look like in a classroom, shortly.

For a copy of my punctuation rules, visit my store by clicking on the TpT button. They are included in my Writing Essentials packet. See the other great resources available on this collaborative and exciting website.

Punctuation Rules

I revised the punctuation worksheets from my ESL teaching and developed a list of 12 important punctuation rules for 4th graders to know. It's quite comprehensive, but a few less easily understood rules have been left out. It is more comprehensive than a similar TpT resource which was created for middle-schoolers, but I felt that identifying transitions and adverbials and knowing the difference between a prepositional phrase and a dependent clause is key to understanding how sentences and parts of a sentence work. Included are the comma and semi-colon rules, but I've left out the lesser-used colon. I believe there is enough confusion with transitions, adverbials and prepositional phrases. I've paired these rules with examples from the Gold Rush and am hoping to have it in my store by the end of the week, but I've shared the list of rules for free in my TpT store. I've also begun a Gold Rush board on Pinterest. Thrilled to have found the transcript from the PBS video, I thought it ideal to have one place for all these interesting resources.

Easier than I thought!

There it is....the TpT button which will take you directly to my store. Now to the widget :)

I celebrated my first "anonymous" feedback and 4.0 rating by paying joining TpT with a premium membership. Last night I googled my work to see how high up it comes in a search and I saw this statement on Pinterest....this woman is a genius! Turns out it is Mrs. K :) Spurred me on, though, to finish Indian in the Cupboard and to refine the punctuation rules. Should be up soon.

Creating a button!

Mrs. K is here patiently helping me create a button for my site. I spent the morning working on punctuation rules and became even more enthralled with the California Gold Rush. Two of the people interviewed in the video have published books on the subject, both of which seem fascinating. J.S. Holliday wrote The World Rushed In and JoAnn Levy wrote several books on the Gold Rush which highlight the often undervalued role women played.

There is a PBS video out there that I must get my hands on!

Indian in the Cupboard

How could this book not have won the Newbery Medal? I'll have to research what it was up against that particular year.  

Indian in the Cupboard tells the story of Omri, the youngest of three brothers, who receives a cupboard for his birthday. He wishes that the cupboard become magical. With the special key his mother gives him from his great-grandmother, the cupboard does become a magical place where plastic toys become real. The toy-Indian which his friend, Patrick, gives him for his birthday is the first toy to come to life. Omri befriends Little Bear, an Iroquois chief. Mesmerized by the minute details of his elaborate costume, Omri learns about the Iroquois and begins to see that what he's learned about Indians from the movies isn't necessarily accurate. Omri cares deeply for Little Bear and treats him, not as a toy, but as a person with feelings and needs. When Omri eventually shares his secret with Patrick, more plastic toys come to life, and they must work together to keep their secret.

Gregory DEVOURED the story. He has gone on to two of the sequels, but something about The Magic in the Cupboard was confusing, and he stopped there. That might be a good choice to read aloud to him once I've caught up with the sequels. For now, I have a 16-item worksheet which covers chapters 1-8 up on TpT for free.

Students practice adverbials of time and sequence in the context of this entertaining read.

(just) as
(just) after
as soon as
before
by the time
once
since
until
when
whenever
while

Here is an example. Students must reorder the bold and underlined words to form the adverbial clause. They have to pick out the adverbial, capitalize it, and use both their understanding of the story and parts of speech to put the clause together correctly.

was girl when mother little Omri’s a, her grandmother gave her the key to a red leather jewel box.

FINDING EVIDENCE

Although my expertise truly lies in grammar, my experience with the fourth-graders in Literature Circles inspired me to work on a "finding evidence" worksheet. I think this type of exercise can be a first step in helping students figure out how to use the text to support their writing. I've come up with the following statements requiring textual support. At a higher-level, students could work in pairs to complete such an exercise, but to see where students are at individually, a match-up exercise with actual quotes from the book could work well. It would be important to add an extra quote for a truer assessment.

 

Omri thinks of the Indian as a toy even though he’s alive.

The Indian is afraid when he finds himself in the cupboard.

Omri admires the Indian.

Little Bear teaches Omri new things.

Omri is curious about the Indian and where he comes from.

Patrick is confused by Omri’s “strange” behavior.      

Omri is protective of this magical cupboard and its contents.

Omri has a sense of humor.