Thanksgiving!

This Thanksgiving, Class 4-324 is thankful for all the new books we just got from the Scholastic Book Fair! Thanks to your generous donations, we were able to get a variety of fiction and nonfiction books to add to our classroom library. Many of us already took these books home to read over Thanksgiving weekend!

Which books are you most excited about reading? Why? 

Sharing Our Personal Essays!

Edison came up with the COOLEST idea during Writing Workshop today. He's writing his personal essay about how Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks is the best Legend of Zelda game. And he thought to himself, "When I'm done publishing this, I can take it down to Game Stop! They sell Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks. I bet other people there would want to read my essay to find out if they would like the game."

As a class, we got pretty excited about his idea, and we started thinking about potential audiences for our personal essays.  

Who do you plan to share your personal essay with you when you are finished with it? 

826nyc and Lots and Lots of Bacon

On Tuesday, we journeyed down to 826nyc for a Storytelling and Bookmaking Program. Volunteers at the center helped us develop our own story titled "Bacon the Hamster vs. Squeaky the Squirrel." After we wrote the first few pages together, we went off to craft our own endings to the story. An illustrator created drawings to match our story. These drawings were bound with the original story and our own endings, so we left with our own original books (complete with our photograph on the back!).

The only downside to the whole trip was Ms. Mildew, the 826nyc publisher who lives deep down in the 14th basement of the building. She was the toughest publisher we've ever encountered. For a while we were concerned that she wouldn't accept our books (she normally doesn't take anything written by children), but after reading our stories she reluctantly agreed they could be approved.

Here are some pictures from our visit. Click on a picture to enlarge it!

What was your favorite part of our trip to 826nyc? How did your story end?