Literacy Workshop News

Hello 3^rd Grade Families!

It’s hard to believe that we are already onto the second half of third grade! Hopefully you had an opportunity to look at your child’s report card this week and celebrate their learning with them.

Important Save the Date! We have scheduled parent visitations to the Bee Fair for Thursday, March 21^st at 2:15. We have been hard at work learning about bees and your child will be so excited to share their learning with you. A more formal notice will be sent home as we get closer to the date.

In this post I am going to fill you in on how our Literacy Workshop is going and what we are working on. There are many parts to our workshop time: reading (of course), weekly paragraph writing, word work, and small groups. Students are given different tasks throughout the week and are learning how to manage their time so that they can complete everything.

Word Work: This year, we are using the new PPS adopted curriculum, Words Their Way. Earlier in the year, third graders were given a spelling inventory test that asked them to spell words with different spelling patterns. This helped me assess the various skills of the group and place students into groups accordingly. Each week, groups are given a set of words that focus on a skill they are working on (vowel combinations, suffixes/affixes, inflected endings, etc.). Students spend time each day manipulating the words sorting them by spelling patters, and writing them down. This helps students build skills in areas they need.

Paragraph of the Week (POTW): Since the beginning of the year, third graders have been working on the important skill of paragraph writing as well as the writing process (brainstorm, organize, first draft, edit, final draft). Each week, students are given a prompt to respond to (this week’s was: What would you do if you were teacher for a day?) and then work on crafting a paragraph with a topic sentence, three supporting detail sentences, and a concluding sentence. For the fall we spent two weeks working on the same topic, breaking the writing up into chunks. Starting this week, students are now writing the whole paragraph in one week. Of course, along with writing a paragraph, we have looked subjects and predicates and what makes up a complete sentence. The third graders are doing a great job and I am seeing their work pay off in both their writing and spelling.

Small Groups: In addition to the work listed above, students are also working in small, leveled groups on various reading skills. Some groups are focused more on fluency and accuracy to help get them really moving along in their reading, while other groups are starting to delve deeper into comprehension skills. Small groups work on reading fiction and non fiction.

I love teaching reading and love of literature to third graders! It is such a fun time in their reading development. If you ever have questions or wonderings about your child’s progress please feel free to reach out!

Take care,
Katie