Grade 3 ELA Week of 1/3/17

By , 01/05/2017

Happy New Year!

I appreciate your patience while I learn to navigate our new blog.  In an effort to make it more clear when Poetry Shares are happening, I have added the new dates to two calendars in my room and to a sign on my agenda, as well as to the Writing Notebook Due Date Calendar.  Students know that they are welcome to take their Poetry/Word Study notebooks home on any given night, so even if I can’t post a poem to the blog, they should still be spending some time each night getting to know a poem.  I want them to not only memorize the words, but to think about what the poem means and how they can use their voices to connect to that meaning.  The memorizing should be early in the two weeks and fairly quick.  After that, students should try out different ways to express the meaning with their voices.

In Readers’ Workshop, we are finishing up our Character Unit with some partner reading.  The intention in this part of the unit is to not only study character traits, emotions and motivations, but to study the way we talk with our partners and how we can grow our book talks.

In Writers’ Workshop, we are drafting and revising our personal narratives.  Revision is when a writer does the work to make their writing better.  So far we have discussed revising by stretching out a moment,  adding a detailed description of a person or place, and adding emotional content by showing how the character feels, rather than just stating how they feel.  We practiced observing as writers with a descriptive eye.  This can work for anything, a person or a place.  In the case of the photos, we were describing a clementine in as much detail as possible.  Then we put the clementines back together in a group, and Ms. Mallery tried to identify individual clementines based on the student’s description.

In word study, small groups are still investigating dialogue, punctuation and capital letters.  When they are done with these investigations, they will teach the rest of the class what they discovered. And (hopefully) everyone will show what they learned in their writing.

 

Here are the poems for the next share on January 13. (I have no idea how to make that poem single spaced.  Please pretend that I figured it out!)

Silence

Quiet,

so quiet

without a sound

 

Floating,

falling

to the ground

 

Snowflake feathers

from snow-white birds

 

Snow is a poem

without any words.

–Eve Merriam

 

Love That Boy

Love that boy,
like a rabbit loves to run
I said I love that boy
like a rabbit loves to run
Love to call him in the morning
love to call him
‘Hey there, son!’

He walk like his Grandpa,
Grins like his Uncle Ben.
I said he walk like his Grandpa,
And grins like his Uncle Ben.
Grins when he’s happy,
When he sad, he grins again.

His mama like to hold him,
Like to feed him cherry pie.
I said his mama like to hold him.
Like to feed him that cherry pie.
She can have him now,
I’ll get him by and by

He got long roads to walk down
Before the setting sun.
I said he got a long, long road to walk down
Before the setting sun.
He’ll be a long stride walker,
And a good man before he done. 

by Walter Dean Myers

Suggestions (not required) for notebook entries:

Write a detailed description of a place of choice.  If you can’t choose, describe your kitchen.

Write a detailed description of a person you know well.

Write about a dream you had.

Write a poem that makes a picture in the reader’s mind (description!) include details about the weather.  The poem doesn’t have to be about the weather,  but it should be part of the poem.