Possessive Pronouns, Topic Sentence, and Main Idea

Today, we discussed possessive pronouns for our bell ringer. Students receive "Polk Pride" tickets if they volunteer to write on the Promethean board. I have a drawing every Friday for each class to win prizes (pencils, erasers, candy, etc.). Our classes do a pretty nice job with staying engaged during this time.

Examples from bell ringer...

• Dana put on (her hers) hat. The correct answer is her. Since Dana is a singular noun, we need a singular possessive pronoun.
• We went for a picnic with ___________ cousins. (Add a suitable pronoun from the list of possessive pronouns).

List of possessive pronouns: my, your, her, his, our, their, mine, yours, hers, ours, theirs

Technically, for agreement, we would choose "our." But, as I said in class, you could say, "We went for a picnic with your cousins." But, we would not have agreement if we said, "We went for a picnic with yours cousins."

Monday night, students had homework to complete one paragraph about their summer. Many students completed this, but there was a good number of students who did not. We need to make sure students are writing their homework in their agenda books daily.

In class, students peer-edited other students' paragraphs. I kept a checklist to give credit to the students who completed the assignment.

Then, we spent time looking at paragraphs and finding the topic sentence and discussing how the main idea is not the same thing. The main idea is not a sentence; it is rather a phrase that tells us what the paragraph is about.

For example...

• Topic sentence: My favorite memory from this summer was our day at Holiday World.
• Main idea: "Favorite memory from summer"

The students homework tonight was to complete pp. 11-13 (packet). They were instructed to identify (underline) the topic sentences in each paragraph.

That's all for today! ~Mr. Polk