Blogging together

 

We have started blogging together. It is a closed blog right now. First we want to figure out what and how to blog, how to save and publish. Then we wish to learn how to write really good comments. When we have practiced a bit, we will be ready to share our writing with you and hope to get comments from you.  I will (when we are ready) put the link to the Slice of Grade 3 blog in this blog's sidebar for an easy access. Stay tuned.

In the head of the reader

The students already know that a lot goes on in the head of a reader. They also know that the different strategies that the readers use, don't happen in isolation. When you ask questions, you use your background knowledge ( connections) to find some answers. Sometimes you read a text and have to use your background knowledge and experience to make sense of what is happening, why the characters are acting in a certain way, what they are feeling, and what might happen. This strategy is called inferring. This is already higher level thinking and asks the reader to look beyond the literal meaning of the text.

On Monday and Tuesday I read....

..and we talked about the feelings and thoughts of the characters, about thoughtlessly destroying something that is valuable to someone else, about the difficulties of apologizing, and about apologies with action.

Today I started reading....

..and since it was a text with a new text structure for us, we had to first figure out who the characters were and what was going on. The whole book is written in a form of a dialogue. I look forward to reading on tomorrow.

Digging deeper into family stories

Ms.Helelyn came this Monday and gave useful advice on how to interview parents or grandparents.

Then she paired the students up and they got to practice both roles -the interviewer (asking questions) and the interviewee (answering questions.)

I hope that the interviews are going well at home and the adults have fun remembering their childhood and telling stories. Don't be timid to share stories that maybe were not asked in the interviews. 

First draft written and moving on

On Monday we reviewed all the advice the students had put together to help the,selves to write the best first draft. The. They wrote, wrote, wrote. 

Yesterday I showed them their first drafts and pointed out what they had done well already. 

Some of them had a lot of writing, all of them had chosen a topic that mattered to them, some stories reminded me of other stories we had read ( this is a positive thing  for a young writer -  to write  like another author.)

The students already knew that writers write many drafts to revise their work to have the best possible choice of words, voice and structure.

On Monday we looked at different ways to include senses. Today we looked at different ways to include feelings and thoughts. One of the students mentioned that we should have had examples of including some older memories into our narratives. Such great writerly thinking.

After looking at the examples, the students experimented with different sentences that they could include in their personal narratives. We will explore and experiment with dialogue tomorrow.

This is just a beginning. More revision waits for us next week.

Examples from: Crafting Writers by Elizabeth Hale

Getting ready to teach others

Last  week we learned about lines and angles. For the next two weeks (or more if necessary) we will learn about 2-D shapes. this learning is with a twist. The students are in pairs and are responsible in becoming an expert in one area and teaching others about their topic.

Here's the task:

Learning outcome:

o   to be able to sort, describe and model 2-D shapes, using appropriate vocabulary.

o   to understand that shapes are classified and named according to their properties.

Group:

Names:

Task 1

v to use various resources (books, models, websites, apps) to learn about

______________________________________________________

Task 2

v to present your learning and teach others

·      You can create models using various tools (paper and pencil, a ruler, geo app, toothpicks, geo boards, straws and other objects, scissors and colored papers)

·      You can find examples from real life (use pictures from internet or take your own photos)

·      You can find and create art.

·      You can include a poem, a dance, or a song to help others.

Task 3:

v Check that others learned what you taught

 

Stealing from authors

Don't be alarmed by the title. When we speak about stealing from authors, we look at different texts and think about what we would like to do as the author does.

One day we looked at student work and put it in order from simple writing to great writing. What did the great writers do to make us enjoy their stories.

Today we chose parts of texts from our favorite books, read out loud to each other, discussed what made the text good, and added to our yesterday's list.

Revisiting Human Body and Health UOI

Yesterday we had a nutritional specialist Ms. Reelika Õigemeel visited us and showed to us what we should consider when thinking of our daily food.

She had sent us feedback about our menu pictures earlier this week.

UOI this week

We are getting ready to interview parents or grandparents. We have generated questions and are revising them to make them more open ended so they would invite more story telling.

Yesterday we talked about purpose, types, and procedures of interviews. I am very thankful to Ms. Helelyn, the anthropologist, for her suggestions and information. 

We still have to practice on each other how to interview and how to keep notes.

We will have a flashback to our previous unit about human body and health. We had hoped to have a nutritional specialist visit in October. With her busy schedule that was impossible. Now she has a bit more time and I thought that it's better to listen to her now than never. She already commented on the daily menu pictures that the students created and will come tomorrow to answer questions.

Today we spent two lessons looking at creative family time-lines and listening to family stories.

Thank you, parents, for your input.

Writing this week

Last week we collected ideas for personal narratives.

This week we are getting ready to write our best first draft.

On Monday we created story mountains to remember the important parts of the story.

Yesterday we practiced some different techniques to pay attention to the details.

After thinking trough the stories in the head, most of the students had a chance to tell their stories orally. 

Tomorrow and on Friday we will look at different personal narratives written by my former students and discuss what makes one narrative better than another.

Reading this week

This week we have continued learning about different reading strategies. We have spoken about making connections and this week the students are reading Patricia Polacco's books and other books related to personal stories and thinking about connections. On Friday or Monday they will mark a page in their reading journal that they believe is their best example of making connections while reading.

Tamsin helped me to make a poster to remember what kind of connections we can make.

During read aloud we have talked about another reading strategy that helps the reader to understand text. Readers often wonder and ask questions before, during and after reading a text. Sometimes it is like almost having a conversation with an author.

We have talked about the types of questions and where we could find answers.

I sometimes draw little sketches on the white board to illustrate the ideas. The students have got used to my little brain heads. They also understand that the speed affects the quality of sketches and handwriting. 

Math this week

We spend every day 10-15 minutes practicing mental math. First we speak about different ways to help us remember facts and then the kids can practice with dice, flash cards, or different games on I-Pad. We have set a goal that by the end of December everyone will know the basic addition facts automatically. This week we hope to see that they are able to get more facts done in 5 minutes than they did last week.

The larger math lesson (40-45) minutes we have spent learning models and vocabulary of lines and angles. We have followed the same routine for three mornings.

Watch and repeat.

Practice.

Play "Simon says."

Draw your own models and label them.

Practice on IXL

I have used the whole body and toy swords to help the children memorize the words. Some of the material is beyond third grade, but it will come handy when talking about 2-d shapes.

Tell me everything about your life

If anyone told me to tell everything about my life, I would have difficulties thinking of what to say and my answer could sound very much like a list of facts.

To avoid this situation in learning about family stories, we started making a list of questions that would invite others to tell us interesting and rich stories.

We decided that we could ask parents and grandparents about childhood, home, school, hobbies, favorite  things, pets, friends, free time, traditions, meeting a loved one and getting married, troubles, big events, and small happy moments.

Everyone wrote some possible questions and next week we will refine the collection.

Differentiating in math

Adjusting teaching and problems to meet the needs of the students doesn't necessarily mean coming up with different tasks and creating many different problems. It is possible to have the same type of problem and give the option of which numbers to use in the story problem, or the difference comes from the strategies that the students choose to use.

For example, the basic problem can sound like this:

Tom is reading a book. He has read ........ pages. He has ....... pages left.

How many pages are in Tom's book?

The student can choose which pair of numbers to use.

23     and      64 ( this would require knowledge of basic facts and place value)

57    and       39 ( this problem expects to understand the idea of regrouping)

234  and     182 ( this problem becomes a bit harder because of regrouping and larger numbers)

When a student has chosen the pair of numbers they have to solve the problem.

Tom is reading a book. He has read 57 pages. He has 39 pages left. How many pages are in Tom's book?

It is possible to solve this problem mentally, in a written form or with the help of base ten blocks.

Sometimes some students get discouraged when they see others using larger numbers or solving problems faster. Also there may be frustration when understanding doesn't come fast enough.

I quite often say something like this to encourage the kids: "This is something you don't know yet, but will learn. We just started to learn about it and you have made progress already. Remember when you couldn't ....., but now you can..... It's because you practiced. You will build on what you know, practice as much as needed, and you will learn. I will help you."

The word "yet" and stressing the importance of practice motivates them to try again and again. 

Sometimes some students already have more knowledge and skills to begin with and don't need very much practice to become confident in using new skills. 

Then it's possible to challenge them with asking for alternative possibilities to solve problems, ask what if.. questions, add steps to word problems, or let them create problems.

We will continue practicing basic facts, computation and solving word problems on regular basis.

This practice doesn't have to take up all the lesson time, so we can start exploring geometry concepts as well.

What do they have in common?

Here are some of the books that I have read out loud to the students. In each of these an author shares with us a memorable personal story.  Some stories are form one evening, some go over few days, some stretch over a long period of time, some have other stories as part of the big story. 

How and why did the author's choose what to write about?

We talked in class and decided that these moments and experiences must have been special and important for the writer to write about, that they included people, places, items, and feelings they wanted to remember and share. 

Then the students looked over their journal entries and marked three ideas from their elaborated lists.

They tried to think which special moments and experiences matter to them the most to remember, write and share.  

Next week we will spend more time looking at mentor texts, choosing, talking through and planning our stories. We want to envision the possibilities before we start writing the drafts.

Thank you for coming to the conferences

Thank you for coming to the conferences yesterday. Grade 3 had 100% families represented.

We talked today with the students how they felt about the experience. Most of them said that the best part was when they got to share their portfolio. Many liked to hear good things about themselves. Some said that they were a bit nervous. Some were a bit disappointed that they couldn't go to the specialists like they do in spring. I felt that we were a bit short of time, but overall I loved the excitement of kids sharing their reflections and parents being supportive and encouraging.


You can access the portfolios when you go to Evernote. For the students the sign in to Evernote is the same as their Gmail account.