Summary

Summary is a very important skill that will be taught, tested, retested and committed to memory this year. It is not an easy skill as students have always retold the details of their stories with such integrity! But...alas, the time has come to "get to the point" and establish the main points in the story or reading. Tonight's homework entails students reading their narrative nonfiction books and using post it notes to determine SWBST. :)

Theme of a Story... the tricky task

Many students are finding it increasingly difficult to determine the "Theme" of a story in their books. Theme is a higher level of thinking than most students have been asked to do, especially before third grade. Our transitional readers are ready for it, but have some things to sort out first. It's a hard objective, but they can do it! Some advice on thinking about theme: First, students must know how to make inferences while they are reading. This means to draw a conclusion based on what you've read and what you know. For example, seeing a young girl in a fancy dress holding a basket of flower petals would cause you to infer that she is a flower girl. (A student who is a proficient third grade reader would be doing this while they are reading.) Secondly, students need to know that theme is the life lesson of a story or the author’s message. Students need to understand that in most stories (with the exception of fables), the author will not tell readers what the theme or lesson of the story is. Readers will have to think about what the characters did wrong or right and what they can learn from the character’s experience. WOW! That is not an easy feat, and we are working on it at school as well. Remember that you aren't summarizing the text, your extracting life advice from it. It's "big stuff", not the small stuff.

What are we Learning?

Students in room 309 (as well as the rest of the land of Third Grade) have begun their study of fantasy as it pertains to Fairy Tales, Fables, Folk Tales, Myths, and Legends. We are taking all of those great lessons we've learned about inferential thinking and applying it to our new study. Students will be asking themselves, "What is the big learning we should be doing in this book? What does the author want me to learn?" While you are doing your big reading at home, take a moment to check out the READERS WORKSHOP link on my page to get some tips on how to support your student. In Writing we are studying realistic fiction writing. Students are taking creating a fictional character and using that character while writing stories that could really happen in real life. This week we are developing our character, discovering problems the character could have and then planning our stories with a beginning, middle and end. We'll also be using our knowledge of characters to show how a character uses motivation to solve those problems and include that in our story plans. We'll be taking a word work test on Friday to assess our ability to add -ed and -ing to words using a variety of rules. And finally, after a lesson on Veteran's Day (Monday) we'll be starting a study on Early American History with a focus on Columbus, the Founding Fathers and others who've made an impact on the development of the United States as we know it.

Third Grade Readers

Third Grade readers are in the thick of studying fictional characters. Students are learning about how to create mind movies by studying the authors words. We're teaching the students to have real and strong conversations about their books by using evidence from what they are reading to support their thoughts. Just a few of the lessons we've taught: 1. Creating Mind Movies by reading the words and developing a picture in your mind. 2. Rereading when your movie becomes "blurry" 3. Stepping into the character's shoes by using your senses to further build your mind movie. 4. Using empathy to make connections to what the character is going through. 5. Establishing an opinion about a character, building onto that opinion by gathering more information and possibly revising your thoughts. Students are also working to response in written form about their readings. Tomorrow students will be writing a letter about something they are reading at their desk (Just RIght Books!) and not only summarizing their reading but also stating their thoughts on mind movies and opinions of the character. Students will be graded on both their ability to response appropriately showing their thinking but also on their ability to write a letter in letter form, use appropriate capitalization and punctuation.

Third Grade Writers

What are the expectations for a Third Grade Writer in September/October? Students will develop a "Small Moment Story" which is a personal narrative. Students have spent a lot of time generating ideas which come from their own lives and experiences. From there, they draft their stories and begin revising their work based off of lessons we teach in class. Some of the lessons we have taught include, but are not limited to... Mini-Lessons: • Generating Ideas (Starting with Turning Points, Starting with Strong Feelings, “Rehearsing” versus Brainstorming, Effective Leads and Strong Endings, “Stretching the Heart”) • Revising (What Am I Really Trying to Say? Listening for Significance in Seed Ideas) • Drafting (The Heart of the Story, Borrowing Techniques for Great Authors) Please feel free to send me an email for any additional questions regarding writing instruction! There is SO MUCH involved in our instruction, including small groups and conferences to target individual needs.

Picture This! Using Mental Imagery While Reading

Check out this article on mental imagery. We are studying visualizing in Reading, which will then make our writing even better. Reading Rockets is an awesome website with many ideas and ways to help your student.


Picture This! Using Mental Imagery While Reading | Reading Topics A-Z | Reading Rockets

Pages on the Blog

Make sure to check out the extra pages on the blog such as Readers Workshop, Writers Workshop and Word Work. I'll be posting examples of anchor charts from our class and explanations about what we are learning. Since our students keep notebooks in Reading and Writing, it often makes it difficult to understand what they are learning and how it is assessed. I hope to clear this up for you guys!

Dot Day!!

Tomorrow is Dot Day! Our third graders will.be "making their mark" so be on the lookout!

Parent Orientation Night

Thank you so much for attending our Parent Orientation Night tonight. It was a success and I hope we answered many of your questions. Please don't hesitate to send us a note if you have any questions at all.
We have enjoyed teaching your children these last two weeks and are confident this will be our best year yet!

If you were unable to attend let us know so we can send home the handouts.

We survived the first week! Mrs. Foley and I are so proud of how hard the kids worked this week. They are really showing us how mature and responsible they've become over the summer. Parent Orientation Night is coming this Thursday! Please be looking for a flyer to come home Tuesday night regarding times and location. We are holding our orientation differently this year and not all grade levels will be the same evening. Third grade is an exciting and busy year for your students and we have quite a bit of information to share with you regarding what to expect. Please plan on attending! We look forward to seeing you there.

Thank you SO MUCH for those of you who were able to attend Meet the Teacher! It was an absolute success and the third grade teachers walked away eagerly chatting about the fun kids we met. Meet the Teacher is important to our students as it begins to ease the "Beginning of Year" jitters and puts a face to the name they've heard. If you haven't taken care of school supplies, please makes sure you get those soon. We will be starting with big learning and setting up Reading/Writing notebooks the first week. Mrs. Foley is planning on setting up Science and Math notebooks in her class as well. One more thing... Please take the time to fill in the survey (below) so that we know how your child is getting home. Can't wait till Monday! Mrs. Jennie McClendon

The start of a new thing...

Welcome to my first ever CLASSROOM BLOG!
You might be thinking that it seems odd to have a classroom blog started in the summer, but I couldn't wait to start thinking about my new classroom, my new (and old) students and all the magnificent things we will learn this coming school year.
Third grade will open up many new things for us and many challenges are ahead. I cannot wait to jump into it all with the amazing group of kids I'll have. 2012/2013 is going to be a smashing year!
So, until that wonderful day that we begin our blogging... this delightful blog is "under construction!"