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.