Literature Circles

The grade 3 students will shortly begin a new reading activity called Literature Circles. In literature circles, small groups of students gather together to discuss a piece of literature in depth. The discussion is guided by students' response to what they have read. You may hear talk about events and characters in the book, the author's craft, or personal experiences related to the story. Literature circles provide a way for students to engage in critical thinking and reflection as they read, discuss, and respond to books. Collaboration is at the heart of this approach. Students reshape and add onto their understanding as they construct meaning with other readers. Finally, literature circles guide students to deeper understanding of what they read through structured discussion and extended written and artistic response.

Perhaps the easiest way to understand what literature circles are is to examine what they are not:

Literature Circles are . . .	Literature Circles are not . . .
Reader response centered	Teacher and text centered
Part of a balanced literacy program	The entire reading curriculum
Groups formed by book choice	Teacher-assigned groups formed solely by ability
Structured for student independence, responsibility, and ownership	Unstructured, uncontrolled "talk time" without accountability
Guided primarily by student insights and questions	Guided primarily by teacher- or curriculum-based questions
Intended as a context in which to apply reading and writing skills	Intended as a place to do skills work
Flexible and fluid; never look the same twice	Tied to a prescriptive "recipe"

Students have already chosen the book that they would like to read for our first Literature Circle and are grouped accordingly. There will be four students reading the same book and they will meet weekly to discuss the assigned reading (typically a few chapters ) for that week. They will each have a different role to prepare for before the meeting and will have a turn doing each job before the book is done. The roles are Ironman- the Illustrator; Supergirl- the Questioner; Captain America- the Connector; Spiderman-the Summarizer; and Wonder Woman- the Word Wizard. We have practiced these roles over the past week, and I am sure your child can explain them in more detail to you. It is my intention that all reading and preparation work will be done in class, however if a student is absent I may send either the reading and/or preparation work home for them to complete so that they will be ready for their next Literature Circle meeting. 
I would also like to thank everyone for your support organizing pictures and costumes for our Wax Museum Biography event! I was so proud of all of the grade 3 students enthusiasm for this project. The grade 2s who provided us with an audience learned a lot about the subjects, and are all eager for their turn to be part of a Wax Museum next year! 

Wax Museum Date

The Wax Museum presentations will be next Tuesday, March 29th. Please have students bring in any props/costumes that they will require on this date. I will also send home a paper reminder in their agendas tomorrow. Thank you for all of your support from home to help make this project a success!

Biography Wax Museum

This information is being sent home in paper format today, but since I always worry not everything finds its way home, I am posting it here as well:

Biographical Wax Museum

The grade 3 students have been busy researching a famous person for their biographical research project. While most of the topic choices are significant Canadians, there are a few exceptions to this rule.

I would love to have the class participate in a fun culminating event to share the information that they have learned by holding a “Wax Museum” of the famous people they are researching. This would involve a bit of work at home that I am hoping you would be willing to help out with.

The premise of the Wax Museum presentation is that students will be in character as statues. Other students will circulate the room turning “on” the statues to hear a short (4-5 sentence) speech that describes their legacy and important contributions from the perspective of their biographical subject. These short speeches will be prepared in class.

The at-home portion would be to help your child find few photos to print off of the internet of their subject. These will be used for a back drop poster for their presentation and can be sent in as soon as possible. This back drop will be made in class- the only home requirement is for a few images to be sent in. If you do not have access to a computer or printer, please let me know.

I would also like each child to come to school the day of the wax museum with props or costumes to help get them into character. The costume need not be elaborate and some examples could include a paint smock and brush for an artist; a sports shirt and helmet for a hockey player; or a stack of books, pen and notepad for an author.  I have not yet set a date for the Wax Museum since students are still busily working on their research, but you can begin by brainstorming and organizing a few ideas! I will be in contact again shortly to finalize the dates. If you have any questions, please email me at amber.steeves@ocdsb.ca

                                                                                                Warmest Regards,

                                                                                                Amber Steeves

Biographies

The unit we are currently working on is an integration of non-fiction texts and biographies, with a little bit of Black History Month thrown into the mix! Students started out by writing (Auto)Bio Poems about themselves. As we work to finish these up, students are listening to a number of biographical books about key historical figures in Black History such as Ruby Bridges, Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Our next step will move to making Bio Books in small groups. Bio Books are simply lap books that highlight important details on the subject's key contributions, family life, events and obstacles they overcame. The first one we make will be on Ruby Bridges. She was the first black student in an all white elementary school in New Orleans. As we progress further into biographies, students will choose a Canadian figure to study and subsequently produce a Bio Book or Bio Poem about.

Prefixes and Suffixes

This week we have been talking about prefixes and suffixes and how they can help us to determine the meaning of a word. For example, knowing that the prefix 're' means 'again' helps us to understand the word 'replay', and knowing that the prefix 'mis' means 'wrong or incorrectly' helps us understand 'misinformed'. Many of our activities this week centered around this topic. We have anchor charts such as the ones below posted in the classroom to help us remember what we have learned.
      

I have also introduced a weekly message activity to help build upon the grade 3 students' editing skills. In this message I will be purposefully making spelling, grammatical and organizational errors for the class as a group to find and correct. They will find these the first day we look at the message. The second day we visit the message, we will identify certain words as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Lastly, the third time we look at it, we will think of ways to improve upon it by using more interesting words, adding descriptive words or more detail. We may also use it to help apply spelling strategies or to practice forming contractions. By working on these skills purposefully as a class, my hope is that it will become second nature when students independently edit their own work.

Jargon Journals and Newspapers

My apologies for not posting sooner since starting up after the holidays. Although the blog wasn't updated, we certainly have been busy in the classroom!

We have started a new weekly activity called "Jargon Journals". Each week I will pull four vocabulary words from read aloud books and we will practice strategies to determine the words' definitions (context in the story, prefix/suffixes, personal experiences with the words, etc). Students will also be required to use the words in writing activities and determine their part of speech (adverb, adjective, noun, etc). I hope that this will be a fun and engaging way to review some vocabulary and grammar. If last week's activity based on the book "Snowmen at Night" was any indication, I am sure it will be!

We have also been examining elements and characteristics of newspaper articles. We have talked about details such as headlines, bylines, captions, datelines, and font styles that are used in newspapers. We have read articles and summarized the content, and now this week will be writing our own articles about personal experiences.

Happy Holidays!

Over the past two weeks we have continued to explore figurative language. The kids are becoming pros at recognizing examples of them in everyday speech and in books. I had hoped to use song lyrics of popular songs to further hone in on their skills, however with the busy-ness of the last week of school before holidays, those plans will be on hold until after the holiday break. I also plan to give the students more opportunity to use figurative language in their own creative writing early in the new year. One of our first activities back will be to do some sensory writing using figurative language about popcorn. If anyone has any concerns with their child eating air popped popcorn, please contact me so that I can accommodate accordingly. Thank you and have a wonderful holiday with family and friends. Happy New Year 2016!