And then Gabe strolled by our classroom and said....

Gabe is the middle school vice principal. He helps with kids who are struggling to behave. Today, he popped into our classroom during 9th hour. No, we weren't in trouble.... in fact, here's what he said:

"Wow. You're really into whatever it is you're doing!"

We all looked up, nodded, and then got right back into it.

So, you're wondering, what are we doing?

We're reading a novel. 

A novel is a book. It is fiction. We just started it on Tuesday and we're already 30 pages in. The whole thing is over 300 pages! 

This is a very popular and almost famous novel. The title is Wonder. The author is R.J. Palacio. The story is about a kid named August (he goes by Auggie) and his life when he went into middle school. The novel was made into a motion picture. (That's another name for a movie.)

We started by making a bunch of predictions. Now we are finding out if our predictions were true or not.

We can choose to read independently or with the group. We discuss what's happening in the novel and why. We also write a "check in" or do a short quiz. This is so we can recall what we're reading.

We have a lot to read before the end of the year, but Sister Patrice is confident we can do it. We plan to watch the movie on the last two days of school. We want to find out if the book and the movie are the same or different. We predict they will be different but we are wondering what they will change.

We earn badges for our achievements. Here are all the badges we can earn. Some of them can be earned just once but some of them we can get several times. Sister Patrice is thinking about making a leaderboard. 

Here is a live feed showing the badges we have earned so far. There will be more as this novel continues!