Websites
Take a look around our website and check out these great updates!
-Reading Log Resources
-Dwankhozi Hope Partnership Page
-Wish List (to be updated soon!)
-Updated Schedule
-Student Websites (We will start building and creating on Wednesday! Look forward to their first big post-Published Personal Narratives)
*I'll be working on image quality. Bear with me and squint :)
-Reading Log Resources
-Dwankhozi Hope Partnership Page
-Wish List (to be updated soon!)
-Updated Schedule
-Student Websites (We will start building and creating on Wednesday! Look forward to their first big post-Published Personal Narratives)
*I'll be working on image quality. Bear with me and squint :)
Reader's Workshop
Reading Toolkit Strategy Focus: Monitor Comprehension We are focusing in on "Monitor My Comprehension," the first strategy in our reading toolkits (see anchor chart from previous post). Part of becoming an great reader is to notice when you are confused and use fix-up strategies to clear it up! In class we may say "My mental movie has grown blurry," or simply "HUH?!" We then use strategies to fix it up: 1. REREAD with deep attention 2. Say "blank" and replace it with a word that makes sense (word specific) 3. Use context clues and think 4. Read on and look for clarity Support us by using these strategies at home! Common terminology helps readers know that these strategies apply to "real life" and not just while reading at school. Sticky-ness: We sure do love stickies. We learned this strategy as a whole group using "stop and think." A panel of 6 students worked with me as a small group. We read a story full of opportunity to stop and think and jotted down our thinking. The next day, our panel members modeled this strategy to the whole class as we restarted the group and read together. We know that good readers stop and think, jotting down their thinking as a record of their comprehension. The photo to the left shows examples of different types of thinking to jot down while reading. Support us at home by using stickies to track your reading together! Find a great book, read slowly, and stop often to jot down your thinking. Refer to the photo as a reminder of different thinking you can write down. Send a picture of you working together and I'll post it to our website! |
New Book Study: The One and Only Ivan Do any of you remember the gorilla, Ivan, who spent 27 years in a Tacoma mini-mall before being freed to a zoo? This heart-wrenching and triumphant story has flooded our room. Author Katherine Applegate has written a work of fiction, where Ivan narrates, based on this real life story. We did some research in class, watched a King 5 news story about Ivan's rescue, and are continuing to talk the dedicated animal-rights activists who made his rescue happen. Right now, the story can be sad. We talk about using that burning feeling, turning it in to passion and action, and what we can do to support animal rights. Check out the link buttons above this column. We are reading the first quarter of this story slowly. We are collecting information about all characters, the setting, the problem and main events. The poster to the right is our guide. Use this strategy at home, as well. We will share each quarter strategy as we explore them in class. We are studying this book together, keeping a detailed study notebook as evidence of our learning. We collect character traits, respond to discussion questions through writing, illustrate our own visualization of the story setting, and more. Duncan Ghallager's notebook is featured in the slideshow to the right. Fabulous work, Duncan! | |
Writer's Workshop
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Seattle News Times editor, Cheryl Phillips (aka Charlie and John's mom!) visited us to share insider secrets and tips for the real-life editing world. Our students are using editing marks like pro's now! Thank you, guest expert Cheryl! (I'm editing very carefully as I write this blog today)
This first writing unit was all about writing small moment, true personal narratives. Students began by writing many small moment stories, all the while using storytelling strategies learned during workshop minilessons.
We transformed our writing. We use to be reporters who told stories step by step. We are now storytellers who "show" rather than "tell." It has been amazing to watch students transform their writing.
We all worked on writing complete sentences and using correct capitalization, and I cowrote a specific writing goal with each student. Students then looked through their story collections and selected their best story to take all the way to publishing! We learned the difference between editing and revising and even had guest expert, Cheryl Phillips, visit to share her strategies and expertise. Our favorite strategy is the "cut open your writing" or "surgery" strategy. I'll let Charlie and Calum explain that revising method to you in the videos above :)
Students completed an editing checklist and then had a peer partner edit their writing a second time. Once done, students had the privilege of checking out a special "publishing pen" (super fancy sharpies) and selecting professional paper to handwrite their revised and edited copies. Lastly, stories were taken to the computer to practice typing, word processing, and saving to personal accounts. We learned that each step of the publishing process allows opportunity for fine tuning! We are also glad that not all writing we do needs to go through the publishing process :(
It feels great to have our first published writing of the year completed. Mr. Jeffery will be visiting tomorrow for a Weebly refresher course and then students will be uploading all three of their drafts to their websites with accompanying commentary. We look forward to sharing our first writing blogs with you and are anxious for your feedback! I'll share more about effective feedback and commenting this week.
Next Unit: Harris Burdick Mystery Fiction!
Third graders love moving away from personal stories to fiction writing :) We will be writing eerie and fantastical stories based on illustrations from the book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg. We will add to our storytelling toolkits by working on writing engaging hooks, strong storylines, and writing with incredible detail. We want our readers to have mental movies so strong they can actually feel like they are in the story! The culminating project will be for students to record themselves doing a performance reading of their mystery. This will be a chance to showcase writing and to work on reading fluency, as well!
Do some research together using the button below. It's a mysterious and awesome site. Start dreaming and scheming up ideas for a great mystery!
We transformed our writing. We use to be reporters who told stories step by step. We are now storytellers who "show" rather than "tell." It has been amazing to watch students transform their writing.
We all worked on writing complete sentences and using correct capitalization, and I cowrote a specific writing goal with each student. Students then looked through their story collections and selected their best story to take all the way to publishing! We learned the difference between editing and revising and even had guest expert, Cheryl Phillips, visit to share her strategies and expertise. Our favorite strategy is the "cut open your writing" or "surgery" strategy. I'll let Charlie and Calum explain that revising method to you in the videos above :)
Students completed an editing checklist and then had a peer partner edit their writing a second time. Once done, students had the privilege of checking out a special "publishing pen" (super fancy sharpies) and selecting professional paper to handwrite their revised and edited copies. Lastly, stories were taken to the computer to practice typing, word processing, and saving to personal accounts. We learned that each step of the publishing process allows opportunity for fine tuning! We are also glad that not all writing we do needs to go through the publishing process :(
It feels great to have our first published writing of the year completed. Mr. Jeffery will be visiting tomorrow for a Weebly refresher course and then students will be uploading all three of their drafts to their websites with accompanying commentary. We look forward to sharing our first writing blogs with you and are anxious for your feedback! I'll share more about effective feedback and commenting this week.
Next Unit: Harris Burdick Mystery Fiction!
Third graders love moving away from personal stories to fiction writing :) We will be writing eerie and fantastical stories based on illustrations from the book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg. We will add to our storytelling toolkits by working on writing engaging hooks, strong storylines, and writing with incredible detail. We want our readers to have mental movies so strong they can actually feel like they are in the story! The culminating project will be for students to record themselves doing a performance reading of their mystery. This will be a chance to showcase writing and to work on reading fluency, as well!
Do some research together using the button below. It's a mysterious and awesome site. Start dreaming and scheming up ideas for a great mystery!
Math
We are neck deep in our addition and subtraction unit. We have spent time reviewing these two operations, mental math strategies to make computation easier (making quick tens, substitution to form landmark numbers) multiple strategies for solving problems (expanded notation, standard algorithm, pictures) and problem solving. As I discussed at Curriculum Night, we will use different models for math learning depending on the unit concepts and what our students need at that time. We have been using a stations model for the last few weeks. Students have been rotation through 15-20 minute stations . Station 1: Independent and Partner Station (Game/ Challenge/Activity) Station 2: Dreambox (adaptive learning software) Station 3: Teacher-Led Instruction and guided practice *Check out the slideshow to the left for snapshots of our three stations This week, we used data to form strategic groups for math. We are having a blast mixing with our partner classroom and learning addition and subtraction from a new teacher! Groups will be fluid and flexible depending on the unit and what our data and observation shows is needed. Our next unit will be multiplication and division! This is a big mathematical leap for third grade. We will spend a lot of time diving deep in to these operations, problem solving, and developing computational fluency. Support us at Home! -Computational Fluency: Data indicates that every third grader can benefit from increased addition and subtraction fact fluency. Using different methods to build this skill is best practice. Try online games, board and card games, catchy (never annoying......) math songs, and more! -Incorporate Dreambox learning in to your at home work routine! -Model authentic addition and subtraction opportunities in your life! |
Rocks and Minerals
My dad, Matthew Klope (wildlife biologist) dramatically tells my class each year that "REAL SCIENCE STINKS!!!" Then attempts to cement the phrase "Science Stinks!" in their brains. He teases that his job, which frequently consists of gray whale necropsies (hence the "stink"), is "real" science :) We are planning on calling him tomorrow to let him know that Rock and Mineral science, or geology in general, passes the real science test! We used our sense of smell as one of our methods for finding properties of our samples, and discovered that our yellow sulfer chunks really reek! But, really, we have turned in to rock and mineral hounds in room 304. After studying rocks and minerals and learning to produce high-quality scientific drawings, property descriptions, and accurate identifications, we have moved on to the rock cycle. Tomorrow we will play a game that takes us on a rock cycle adventure, and ultimately ends up as a comic strip to illustrate evidence of our learning. Check out the slideshow below :)