Week 3: Thunder Rose

Dear Parents and Students,

I hope that you have enjoyed our long Labor Day weekend. Because this week is a four-day week, we are going to hit the ground running. Last week we began to define the characteristics of folk tales, and we will continue that theme this week with Thunder Rose. I hope that you enjoy this selection just as much as I have.

Main Selection Summary

Thunder Rose is an amazing girl! As a baby she drank milk straight from the cow. Rose constructed a building of iron and wood at age nine, and she could rustle a wild steer with her own hands by twelve. Once, Rose calmed two churning tornadoes with the song her parents sang for her as a baby. All in a day's work for the girl with thunder in her veins.

Activity: The Taller the Better

Tall tales use exaggeration to tell the story of impossible events, often because of some superhuman ability of a character. With a family member, make up your own tall tale about someone in your family. Don't hold back - the taller the better!

Comprehension Skill: Cause and Effect

A cause is what makes something happen. An effect is what happens as a result of the cause. An effect may have oneor more causes. Sometimes authors will use words such as because and so to show cause and effect.

Comprehension Skill Activity: The Why of the What

Read a story with a family member. After any major event occurs, pause and identify why the event happened. There may be one thing that caused it, or there may be two or more causes.

Thunder Rose Vocabulary

branded marked by burnign the skin with a hot iron

constructed fitted together; built

daintily with delicate beauty; freshly and prettily

devastation waste; destruction

lullaby song for singing to a child

pitch thinck, black, sticky substance made from tar or turpentine

resourceful good at thinking of ways to do things

thieving stealing

veins blood vessels that carry blood to the heart from all parts of the body

Meet the Author: Jerdine Nolan

Meet the Illustrator: Kadir Nelson

Grammar Skill: Subjects and Predicates

A complete sentence must have a subject and a predicate. The subject is a word or gorup of words that tells whom or what the sentence is about. The predicate is the word or group of words that tell something about the subject. For example: Michael is supposed to go to bed. "Michael" is the subject and "is supposed to go to bed" is the predicate. If a sentence does not have one of each, it is not a sentence but a sentence fragment.

Grammar Activity: Sentence Junction

With a family member, have one of you write down six numbered subjects on a piece of paper. They could be words like "I," "My dog," etc. Have the other person write down six numbered predicates on a separate sheet of paper. These could be phrased like "stared at my homeowork," "do sillthings," etc. Now take turns rolling two numbers on a number cube. Use each pair of numbers to join subjects and predicates from your lists into new sentences. What kinds of inventive sentences can you come up with together?

Dailies

Announcements:

1. $15.00 School Fees are due as soon as possible.
2. Signed Papers go home on Tuesdays and should be signed and returned on Wednesday morning. (Note: To insure that you have seen every test paper, please initial each graded paper.)
3. Our Students of the week are Delincya and Cameron.
4. Please donate any new or used chapter books to our classroom library. We are trying to build the library and stock it with chapter books that your children would like to read if they finish their projects early. They may be books on a 3rd to 6th grade reading level. (Note: These books will not be returned at the end of the school year. They will be a permanent donation to the classroom.)

Let's have a great week!

Thanks,

Mrs. Telford