Our current reading unit is focused on learning from expository texts. The skills we focus on during this unit are: determining main idea and supporting details, combining information across texts (cross-text synthesis), and growing ideas from nonfiction. Students will learn how to write a nonfiction summary!
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This week we're wrapping up our Reading Research Unit. Students have been reading books across animal topics to see what big ideas they can develop about the Animal Kingdom, such as an animal's body adapts to its habit. We'll be starting our next and final unit, which is fiction based. We'll revisit understanding characters (traits and change), summarizing, and author's craft.
We're starting a unit on poetry this week! Students will learn that they can apply many of their fiction reading skills to reading poetry, such as reading to understand the "gist" of the poem, inferring character feelings, and determining life lesson/themes from poems.
New skills students will learn: Examining poetry elements (structure, mood, line breaks, repetition) Distinguishing the speaker from the poet Examining how the poet creates images that develop meaning (simile and metaphor) Distinguishing between perspective and point of view In class, students will be reading from a teacher-created anthology of children's poetry. Students will also be reading self-selected fiction texts. Looking for a fun poetry website? Check out Kenn Nesbitt's website, Poetry4Kids: We have started a new unit: Character Studies. During this unit, students will learn how to get to know a character and develop theories (ideas) about characters. During the second part of the unit, students will be in book clubs. Students will frequently meet with their book club to discuss ideas, questions, etc. about their club's book. Students will be learning about the structure of a story and how character's typically experience a change through their journey. During the third and final part of the unit, students will compare and contrast characters across different books. Students will make observations and generalizations about characters across stories, like how they handle situations and what life lessons characters learn.
Last week we focused mainly on strategies for determining a nonfiction text's main idea and supporting details. Students practiced many times "writing in the air" a nonfiction summary after using a taught strategy. Here is picture of our completed chart for figuring out main idea and supporting details...We started our third reading unit of the year-- Reading to Learn: Grasping Main Ideas and Text Structures. A unit overview letter was sent home. You can also find it through the Reading Resources tab on this page!
To help students build their vocabulary for talking about characters and to help build community within our classes, we started a year long project focused on thinking, talking, and writing about the kind of people we are!
Third graders had the opportunity to share what they learned about being strong mystery readers to a second grade class. Some of the tips they taught the second graders were:
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Our Current Read Aloud:
Read alouds are used to teach reading skills and strategies. Sometimes I read new parts of our read aloud during our lessons. Other times, I go back to previously read parts to teach a skill and strategy. I ask that students do not read the current read aloud until after we finish it. Archives
November 2018
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