Sparkles, Superstars and Spelling

I hope everyone had a great weekend. Here's an update of what we got up to in grade 3 English, and what's on the roster coming up! 

We ended our week practising to stretch a sentence to add more detail and to include what I call "sparkle" words- these are words that more enticing to a reader. Think 'stupendous' rather than 'great', or 'exclaimed' rather than 'said'. Students also began a Word Superstar weekly vocabulary activity. Each day students will be given a clue to help them guess the Superstar Word. Clues might be how the word is used in a sentence, a synonym or antonym, the part of speech, the definition, etc. The word will be revealed on each Friday, and the goal is to help expand their vocabulary in an exciting way. 

My classes have also started using a class word wall. This is a list of words that children will have access to every time there is a writing activity. It includes many high frequency words that they should be able to spell by the end of the year. Each week, children will do a variety of activities to practise four of these words, as well as an additional word chosen by them from their class writing or personal interests. You can find a copy of the word wall words in the "spelling" tab of the blog home page. While there will not be a formal weekly spelling test, children will bring their weekly word lists home each Friday and are encouraged to continue to practise if they have not mastered them yet. That being said, I believe one of the best ways to become a great speller is to be exposed to words so please encourage many opportunities for reading and writing in English over rote memorisation of a few words.

Dependent on students' personal spelling needs, I will be introducing a program called Words Their Way with this grade 3 class. Working with small groups with similar spelling abilities, we will work on sorting and spelling words based on word patterns or features. More on this program to come as we continue with it. 

The first reading comprehension strategy that we will work on this year is Making Connections. There are three main kinds of connections that readers can make: text to self where readers find similarities between what happens in the story and their own life; text to text where they find similarities between two different books; and text to world where similarities are found between the book and the world (or community). I invite you to encourage your children to make connections in the books that they read at home too, referencing specific examples in the books to support their answers. If I taught your child last year, you may remember that I introduced the idea of making connections to them then. I'm excited to see how much deeper their connections will be now! 

Sorry for any confusion

My apologies if you had a grade 2 post sent to your email account. I posted on the wrong blog page and didn't realize until it was too late. While that grade 2 post has since been deleted from my grade 3 blog, it was likely sent to your inbox and I have no way of retrieving it. 

First Week Activities

I had a great first week of teaching my new grade 3 class! They are lovely group of children, and I am excited for what the year will bring. The first week was spent doing activities based on Melanie Watt's new book "You're Finally Here" and reviewing parts of speech (adverbs, adjectives, nouns and verbs- ask your child about the hilarious game of Hot Potato this entailed!). Today we moved on to learning about subjects and predicates in a sentence, and will soon begin discussing how to stretch a sentence with detail to make it really sparkle. 

One activity that I do with all of my classes as a positive reinforcement/behavioural management tool is a bead system. Each student in the class has a pipe cleaner hanging on the wall. When they are caught listening well, working diligently or helping a friend they are given a bead on their pipe cleaner. At the end of the month the pipecleaners are taken down and are made into bracelets. They will be allowed to bring their bracelets home to keep and you will be able to see just how many beads they earned with me each month! I will also occasionally pass out "Caught You Doing Something Nice" tickets which are simply just small coupons that are given to students who are caught being an extra helpful friend.

Welcome to the Grade 3 English Blog!

Thank you for checking out the blog for your child's grade 3 English class! I am happy that the information that I sent home today has found its way to you. I will write more detailed posts as the week progresses to tell you more about myself and the program. For now, welcome to a new school year and to my blog!