Grade 3 ELA Week of 12/5/16

By , 12/06/2016

Ok, I will admit it.  Every time parent-teacher conferences roll around, I get very nervous beforehand.  Then, after they are done, I realize how silly I was to be nervous because I have such a wonderful group of caring individuals who genuinely want to do their best to support their children.  It was lovely to talk with those of you I met with yesterday.  It was truly a joy.

Here’s the calendar for December for Writing Notebook Turn-In dates. I added Poetry Shares to the calendar, so you could have a little reminder.  This week a handful of kids forgot to memorize their poems.

These are the poems that your child can choose to memorize for the next poetry share on December 9.

Dog

Under a maple tree

the dog lies down,

Lolls his limp

Tongue, yawns,

Rests his long chin

Carefully between

Front paws;

Looks up, alert;

Chops, with heavy

Jaws, at a slow fly,

Blinks, rolls

On his side,

Sighs, closes

His eyes: sleeps

All afternoon

In his loose skin.

 

By Valerie Worth

 

The Pasture

 

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;

I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away

(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):

I shan’t be gone long.—You come too.

 

I’m going out to fetch the little calf

That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,

It totters when she licks it with her tongue.

I shan’t be gone long.—You come too.

 

By Robert Frost

 

I hope you all got to see the apostrophe S quizzes I sent home last week.  This week we are working on understanding the differences between some commonly confusing homophones.  I’m hoping your children will become the kind of people who get annoyed when they see someone misusing an apostrophe.  I want your children to be grammar geeks who try not to correct their friends.  That’s my goal!  We will also soon be starting small group work around capital letters and punctuation.  Small groups will learn as much as they can about the topic I assign them, then they will be responsible for teaching what they learned to the rest of the class.

In reading we are focusing on envisioning the action in the story and identifying character traits.  We’ve begun this work together in a read aloud of Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner.

Suggestions for writing entries.  As usual, I prefer that students come up with their own ideas, but for those writers who need a little extra push, here are some ideas for the week:

1. Go sit in a place you go to often.  First take a good look around and try to notice as many details as you can that you never noticed before.  Then write a whole page describing the place.  Include as many details as you can, so the reader can picture the place in his or her mind.
2. Write a whole page describing a person who might end up in your personal narrative.  Write how they look, how they act and how you feel about them.
3. Write about a time you were really annoyed.  What made it happen?  How did you feel?  How did it get resolved?  How did you feel after it was resolved?

Have a wonderful week!  Don’t forget the reading 30 minutes each night and the writing of at least two entries every week!