Friday 27 November 2015
Inferring Wrap Up
This week we continued to use both picture and text clues to infer deeper meanings of books we read. The students were fascinated by pictures from the collection "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick". The author Chris Van Allsburg came across the pictures of Harris Burdick through a friend, Peter Wenders. Apparently, Burdick presented the pictures with their titles and captions to Wenders in hopes that Wenders would be interested in purchasing the stories that accompanied the illustrations. Wenders was intrigued by the pictures and asked Burdick to submit the corresponding stories the next day. However, Wenders never heard from Harris Burdick again, so the "true" stories behind the pictures were never revealed. Not only are the circumstances surrounding the pictures quite mysterious, but so are the pictures. Students chose one of the pictures and then made inferences by completing an O-W-I chart (observations, "wonder" questions, and inferences based on the observations and questions). I hope to finish our last inferencing activity early next week and then move on to a unit on figurative language.
Thursday 19 November 2015
Beginning inferences
As posted last week, we have begun our work on making inferences while reading. We opened the unit by practicing the language of making inferences. Since when making inferences you are really making informed guesses on the author's message, we use language such as "I think...", "Maybe...", and "Possibly..." while then supporting our inferences with evidence and personal examples.
We then read the book "Yo! Yes!". This book has a very limited number of words, but is still able to convey a story. We examined techniques that the author, Chris Raschka, used to help us infer this story. Using these techniques, students are now busy creating their own "scripts" of limited dialogue. They will present these on Monday to the class. Students are invited to bring in any props or costumes that they would like to use in their skits. I expect that Monday's class will be a lot of fun!
We then read the book "Yo! Yes!". This book has a very limited number of words, but is still able to convey a story. We examined techniques that the author, Chris Raschka, used to help us infer this story. Using these techniques, students are now busy creating their own "scripts" of limited dialogue. They will present these on Monday to the class. Students are invited to bring in any props or costumes that they would like to use in their skits. I expect that Monday's class will be a lot of fun!
Thursday 12 November 2015
October-Present Overview
Due to labour negotiations, it has been a long time since I have last posted. I will provide a short overview of what we have been up to in grade 3 English, and then I hope to return to a more weekly updating schedule.
As you may remember, we had read the books "The Name Jar" and "My Name is Yoon" when learning about making connections. I also sent home a homework sheet for students to learn more about where their names came from and why they were chosen. We took this information and used it to write persuasive paragraphs about why their name was special. We talked about strong topic sentences that appeal to readers, using supportive details and how to write concluding sentences.
While learning about media devices, we examined a number of movie posters to discuss features that helped persuade target audiences to go see the movie they were promoting. We created our own movie posters for Robert Munsch books. We also wrote letters to Robert Munsch when we were learning about the components of a friendly letter.
We have also been working on parts of speech- especially the difference between adverbs and adjectives which I found to be a tricky differentiation for many students to make. Adverbs are words that describe verbs (quickly, loudly, fast) and describe to what extent (i.e. very, really, too), and often end in the suffix -ly. Adjectives are words that describe things and often and with the suffixes such as: -ful, -ous, -able, -ive, and -ible. Students created monsters and then wrote corresponding sentences using both adjectives and adverbs to describe them.
I have made some changes to our word study program. I had been providing students with four words from our high frequency word wall with a common spelling pattern and then letting them choose 1 choice word that they wanted to learn how to spell. In order to allow students even more choice to accommodate the varied spelling abilities in the class, while also providing more focus on the spelling pattern itself, I have decided to run a "chunk spelling" program. Each Friday, students will be given a word chunk (group of letters- last week it was "et"). Independently and then as a group, we brainstorm as many words as we can that contain the chunk. They are sorted into short words (get, let, bet), medium words (forget, regret, pretzel) and long words which often require the application of suffixes and prefixes (unforgettable, regretful). After a huge master list is made, students choose ten of these words. Each morning for a few minutes before my lessons begin, students have an opportunity to do activities to help them practise the words that they have chosen so they are not required to anything with them for homework. On Fridays, there will be a chance for students to quiz each other on their spelling words to see how they are doing, but I will not be recording their scores as I get enough information on their spelling abilities from their natural written work. I continue to post the grade appropriate word wall list in the classroom and encourage children who require its support to use it and to review these words at home. The word wall list is posted on my blog under the "spelling words and activities" page.
Currently we are working on using quotation marks correctly to write dialogue. We are making a class joke book to accomplish this. It has been a lot of fun but as this is a new skill, it is one that we will continue to work on. We will also be beginning a unit on the reading comprehension strategy of inferring shortly. An inference is when we understand things that the author does not tell us. We infer why things happen, why characters behave the way they do, and how characters are feeling. The reader creates inferences based on clues that the author does provide and their own knowledge, or schema.
As you may remember, we had read the books "The Name Jar" and "My Name is Yoon" when learning about making connections. I also sent home a homework sheet for students to learn more about where their names came from and why they were chosen. We took this information and used it to write persuasive paragraphs about why their name was special. We talked about strong topic sentences that appeal to readers, using supportive details and how to write concluding sentences.
While learning about media devices, we examined a number of movie posters to discuss features that helped persuade target audiences to go see the movie they were promoting. We created our own movie posters for Robert Munsch books. We also wrote letters to Robert Munsch when we were learning about the components of a friendly letter.
We have also been working on parts of speech- especially the difference between adverbs and adjectives which I found to be a tricky differentiation for many students to make. Adverbs are words that describe verbs (quickly, loudly, fast) and describe to what extent (i.e. very, really, too), and often end in the suffix -ly. Adjectives are words that describe things and often and with the suffixes such as: -ful, -ous, -able, -ive, and -ible. Students created monsters and then wrote corresponding sentences using both adjectives and adverbs to describe them.
I have made some changes to our word study program. I had been providing students with four words from our high frequency word wall with a common spelling pattern and then letting them choose 1 choice word that they wanted to learn how to spell. In order to allow students even more choice to accommodate the varied spelling abilities in the class, while also providing more focus on the spelling pattern itself, I have decided to run a "chunk spelling" program. Each Friday, students will be given a word chunk (group of letters- last week it was "et"). Independently and then as a group, we brainstorm as many words as we can that contain the chunk. They are sorted into short words (get, let, bet), medium words (forget, regret, pretzel) and long words which often require the application of suffixes and prefixes (unforgettable, regretful). After a huge master list is made, students choose ten of these words. Each morning for a few minutes before my lessons begin, students have an opportunity to do activities to help them practise the words that they have chosen so they are not required to anything with them for homework. On Fridays, there will be a chance for students to quiz each other on their spelling words to see how they are doing, but I will not be recording their scores as I get enough information on their spelling abilities from their natural written work. I continue to post the grade appropriate word wall list in the classroom and encourage children who require its support to use it and to review these words at home. The word wall list is posted on my blog under the "spelling words and activities" page.
Currently we are working on using quotation marks correctly to write dialogue. We are making a class joke book to accomplish this. It has been a lot of fun but as this is a new skill, it is one that we will continue to work on. We will also be beginning a unit on the reading comprehension strategy of inferring shortly. An inference is when we understand things that the author does not tell us. We infer why things happen, why characters behave the way they do, and how characters are feeling. The reader creates inferences based on clues that the author does provide and their own knowledge, or schema.
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