It's May! What Are You Reading?

Winding down and gearing up at the same time... welcome to North Carolina! Our state tests are truly end-of-grade and have to be given during the last ten days of school. So, of course, we're working on selections, but there's a lot more going on in room 301, too!

It time for mysteries! I save those for last because mysteries require us to use all of our reading powers.

My fifth grade readers are enjoying (immensely)

 

For their book clubs, they've chosen:

Now, there are, of course, more to mysteries than whodunnit, so I'm also working with the universal theme of need. Sam Westing carefully planned his game to fill a need for each of the players. We've taken a look at Maslow's hierarchy and will spend some time focusing on the bottom tiers (Westing Game covers the top.) by annotating a few key chapters of:

 National Geographic has a unit to introduce kids to the book and to the movie about the Lost Boys of Sudan, God Grew Tired of Us, which we'll watch. Our journal entries will focus on the interaction of physical and emotional need. Need leads to conflict, and there's the heart of the story.

Just like fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the Dark Side. Yes, we watched A New Hope for May the Fourth and did a Hero's Journey plot chart with it. I was surprised by the number of kids that saw The Force Awakens, but not this. My math classes do Pi Day, my reading, May the Fourth. What's the point of being in gifted ed. if you can't geek out a little?

By the way, most of the book club books can be snagged at the Scholastic Warehouse Sale, which should be coming up, at least in my little corner of the world, in a few weeks. Pretty much everything's half off, so this is where I stock up, big-time. Totally worth the trip.

The Focused on Fifth team is linking up to share what we're reading! Curious? Want to add your own? Join in here!

I do hope you are enjoying the last weeks with your kiddos. Having testing so close to the end makes it fly for me, just when I wish it would slow down so I can keep them close before we send them off to middle school. *Sigh* It is a bittersweet thing!