Tag Archives: Barbara O’Connor

Brainstorm, Plan, and Keep Planning

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Just like our favorite author,Barbara O’Connor and Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, when we write our narrative stories we start by making a plan. Below, some of our class authors are showing off the fantastic plans they are using to write a story. Notice the way they have planned for the beginning, middle, and end of their stories as well as a climax, or big moment. The students have also included what their secondary characters will be doing at certain points in their stories.

Kyan’s Plan:
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Ixell’s plan and her engaging lead:
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Antwan’s plan and his engaging lead: photo 1
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Bullfrog Background Knowledge

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We have been loving Barbara O’Connor’s awesome book The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester. In order to better understand this book we realized that we needed to develop some schema, or background knowledge, about the main subjects in the books. Yesterday, we researched submarines. Today, we need to learn more about one of the main characters in the book Tooley Graham! Since Tooley is a bullfrog, here is some wonderful bullfrog information!

What is a Submarine anyway?

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Our new favorite read aloud is, The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester by, Barbara O’Connor. Yesterday, we finally learned what Owen found that fell off the train. (If you haven’t read the book yet and you don’t want us to ruin it, you may want to stop reading this post now!) Owen finds a small, red, submarine! We were very excited to learn about Owen’s big find, but we aren’t totally sure what a submarine really is. Below is a cool, interactive site that explains what a submarine does and the different parts of the ocean that it explores. This website goes perfectly with next week’s science unit on our oceans and seas!

As a side note, we have decided that we need to “Uuuuuse the Cluuuuues” a little better when reading. There is a submarine on the COVER OF THE BOOK so, maybe we needed to pay closer attention! 🙂