The Campfire Chronicles

reported by Miss Camp

February 15, 2002

Josh is our Scout of the Week because, in addition to doing his homework every day, he took one day at a time and tried his best each day.

Josh shared many exciting and interesting ideas and opinions in our Book Club discussions, and he listened to what others had to say.

No matter how Josh feels, he is always kind to others. He smiles often and makes others feel good about themselves.

Every day Josh stays for a few minutes after school to help Miss Camp and Lenny clean up the classroom. After the Valentines Day Party, he even washed every desk and chair in the room!

Our Featured Writer of the Week is Chelsea! Her story, When Banana Went to Space, is now posted on the bulletin board outside of the cafeteria. It is also printed below. Not only is Chelsea’s story well organized, but her Word Choice, details, and use of dialogue are well chosen. They make her story even more exciting and fun to read.

        Once upon a time there was a monkey named Banana. He wanted to go to space because he loved the moon and the planets too. Banana flew in a spaceship. While he was flying he saw all of the planets.
        Banana was on his way to Neptune, but he was not paying attention, so he crashed into Mars instead. He was very curious, so he went out to explore in his spacesuit.
        Banana floated away from Mars. He was amazed at everything he saw around him. There were the Seven Sisters, the Asteroid Belt, the Big Dipper, and the Little Dipper. Banana liked how the shooting stars moved across the sky.
        When Banana finally got to Pluto, he met a space dog named Pluto. They became friends. Pluto helped Banana get his spaceship back from Mars and together they saw the rest of the planets.
        Banana asked if Pluto wanted to go back to Earth with him and Pluto said, “I can’t.”
        “Why?” asked Banana.
        “Because this is where I belong.”
        “Well, O.K.” cried Banana.
        So Banana went back to Earth. He felt sad because he didn’t have his new friend Pluto with him. He walked home.
        One day when Banana woke up, he heard someone knocking at the door. When he opened the door, he couldn’t believe his eyes. It was Pluto! Pluto asked if he could live with him. Banana said, “Of course!”
                                                        by Chelsea

Mrs. Green has joined the staff at Camp Linus! As a reading specialist at LWW, Mrs. Green has wonderful knowledge, experience, and ideas to share. She will be helping us to improve our reading comprehension and writing skills by teaching us 5 strategies:

1. Identifying the Problem and Solution in a story, and the sequence of events that occur to help solve the problem. Retelling the story – a summary of the main plot.

2. Character Analysis: Retelling the story in regards to one character only – a subplot. Identifying what the character does (or what happens to the character) in the story, and thinking about what kind of person it would take for those things to happen. Looking at the character’s big events as evidence of what kind of person he/she is. Character traits (descriptive words, adjectives) are chosen based on the evidence.

3. Cause and Effect: Retelling the story by showing how each event causes another to occur.

4. Compare and Contrast: Looking at what is similar and different between two characters or two books.

5. Main Idea and Detail: Primarily used with non-fiction. What is the main idea? What details support the main idea?

In small groups, Mrs. Green will show us how to use a Graphic Organizer for each of these strategies, and then how to take our information and use it to write an organized paragraph. We are learning a lot and it is very exciting and fun!

When Mrs. Green read Lovable Lyle to the class, she shared with us what she was thinking while she read.

She likes to think about why the characters say what they do, what might happen on the next page, what clues she discovers in the pictures, and how the different characters might be feeling. We have to think about what we read – about what is going on in the story – before we can understand it!

Two of our Book Clubs are now practicing this “Think Aloud” strategy with a very fun book called Bony-Legs.

One of our Book Clubs, being led by Mrs. Green, read City Green by DyAnne DiSalvo-Ryan. When we were trying to identify the problem and solution in the story, we realized that there are two! The main problem is that a building is torn down and a pile of rubble is left in the empty lot. Another problem is that there’s a character, Old Man Hammer, who is very unhappy about the mess left in that empty lot. We learned that the story of how Old Man Hammer’s problem gets solved is a “subplot.” It is like a small story within the big story.

To help us understand how the problems were solved, we used a graphic organizer called the “Story Map.” On the Story Map, we list the characters, the setting, the problem, the solution, & the sequence of events that help solve the problem. We made one Story Map for the main plot, and one Story Map for the subplot!

We use the Story Map to help us retell the story in a written paragraph. It is easy to write a paragraph when we have all of our information organized on a Graphic Organizer. First we write a sentence to introduce the story. Next we write the problem. Then we write all of the main events that help the problem to be solved. After that we write the solution. The last thing we do is write a concluding sentence that ties it all back to the first sentence…so that it makes a circle. Below you can see our two different Story Maps, and a paragraph that was written from each one!