The fourth grade is paddling further down the Negro River in Brazil where they have found the Carter's house. Maia is realizing the beauty and the wonderment of the rain forest. Unfortunately, the twins are most unkind and uninviting, but Maia and Miss Minton, her governess, have found a way to circumvent their naughty behavior.
Our fourth graders are comparing how Maia, Miss Minton, and the Carters reacts to the jungle. Several of the girls have drawn a conclusion that the book seems a lot like a Cinderella story; the plot has a fairy-tale air to it.
In writing, we are concentrating on the parts of a sentence using the idea of "framing our thoughts." In other words, a picture frame is like a sentence because both have a subject and both usually have some kind of action, although "still" in a photograph. Once they have the idea of what the subject is we can use descriptive words, adjectives, to describe the subject, making it much more interesting.
