In our reading time this month, we are focusing on character study. We’ll be spending lots of time reading fiction books, learning to closely observe characters, make predictions, and sharpen our skills in interpretation. This week we practiced observing how our characters walk and talk, made some theories about our characters, and looked for patterns in our characters’ behaviour. We're following along with the characters in Winn-Dixie to practice are skills in studying characters! |
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Currently 3B is learning about classic and fractured fairy tales in our writing time. Fractured fairy tales are based on classic fairy tales, but the setting, characters, problem, solution, or some other element of the story are changed. The students have had great fun reading a variety of fractured fairy tales, and are working on their own fairy tale adaptations during writing time. We’ve been talking about how to write with cohesion, write with a clear story structure, balance narration with description and dialogue, and plan our scenes with story-planning booklets. 3B had been working hard in December on Christmas "important books" for their families. We focused on crafting interesting descriptions and making our ideas clear to our audience (who were the students’ families). You can see the original The Important Book below to see our inspiration. The class made the wrapping paper, cards, and everything, and were very proud of their creations. We hope you enjoyed their lovingly authored Christmas books! This week some enthusiastic members of our class created a reader's theatre production of Beauty and the Beast at their own initiative. They worked on rereading to develop fluency, speaking with expression and phrasing, and accurately portraying characters when practicing the script for their acting productions. They created some beautiful class, and their classmates gave them a unanimous 5/5 stars for the production!
We’re almost done reading our most recent read aloud, The Wild Robot by Peter Brown. The class has grown quite fond of the robot protagonist Roz and her gosling son Brightbill, and they are very particular about how I read Roz’s dialogue in the book (it must be strictly monotone with no expression). Some students have already started to read the sequel in our class, and we can’t wait to find out what happens to Roz at the book’s conclusion!
In the true spirit of this season, a local mom is organizing support for some of the long-term care centres by sending cards to the residents. Our class happily pitched in this week by writing cards to the seniors with notes of encouragement, and sweet tidbits of information about the students' favourite Christmas traditions and their artwork. In a year that has been particularly challenging for our community's older citizens, we hope it can brighten their Christmas!
As we continue to practice our persuasive writing skills in our current writing unit, we delved in the genre of advertisements. The students researched the history of ugly Christmas sweaters and then set to work designing their own ugly Christmas sweaters and detailing numerous convincing reasons that their audience should purchase that sweater. The advertisements were truly convincing, and there are some cunning businesspeople in the making in our class!
In reading for the next couple of months we’ll be shifting our focus to reading non-fiction texts! Our unit will be all about reading to learn, grasping main ideas, and accessing text structures. So far we’ve worked on previewing our books, identifying the main idea, extracting key points, and becoming experts so we can teach our peers about a topic. We read a lot about frogs this week, and so we drew frogs this week after becoming experts on the differences between frogs and toads. The students have really enjoyed choosing topics to read about and teaching their peers about what they’ve learned, and I’ve learned lots about interesting animals, vehicles, and many other topics already!
Our class has officially completed more than 5000 minutes of home reading, so we got to have a PJ Day in 3B on Wednesday! It was the perfect weather to wear cozy outfits, and we even wrapped up our PE basketball unit in style! We’ll keep tracking our home reading in agendas this month to see when we get to have our next PJ Day!
![]() With the new month came a new writing unit, and we’re now working on changing the world around us with our writing! We’ll be writing persuasive speeches, petitions, and editorials in the coming weeks during our writing time, and the class has been hard at work convincing their audiences of their theses. We successfully convinced Mrs. Smith with our letters to hold an online book fair which was very exciting, and the students have been looking for noteworthy topics and fixable problems to write about. We’re working on developing brave, bold opinions and considering our audience when crafting our arguments. With our recent work on global citizenship in Social Studies, it’s the perfect time for us to be using our writing to change the world around us, whether our school, friends, or community! We’ve been reading and writing poetry this month in Language Arts, and wrote a variety of different types of poetry this past week. The students worked hard to make interesting word choices and tried to paint pictures in their readers’ minds. They are very proud of their variety of poems, and you can see more of your child's poetry on Seesaw
Last month we sent postcards to different staff members at Millgrove and over the past little while the students have been receiving their return mail with the reply from the other teachers. Today, Mr. Cherry played a trick on the teachers in 3B by returning mail to the students who had written to him with a letter and items that he knew would drive the teachers crazy: kazoos, loud clappers, and whoopee cushions. The joke was on him, however, because we returned the favour later today when we threw a very loud surprise parade in his remote teaching classroom. He was a very good sport, and we had fun pranking him back for his noisy mischief
We've been learning a lot this month about how to craft personal narrative stories during our writing lessons, and this week we learned from authors like Karen Hesse in Come On Rain about how to make our writing powerful and meaningful. The students have chosen a "seed" writing piece that we will continue to revise and edit in the coming weeks. We learned that Robert Munsch never publishes a story until he's told it at least 100 times, and while we won't write 100 drafts of our writing pieces, we're learning that it takes a lot of refining and writing to get a book published!
![]() Our class has been captivated this week by the chapter book The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, which we just started reading. It is about a vain, self-absorbed stuffed rabbit who finds himself on a fantastical adventure. The book has many surprising twists and turns, and we've used the book this week to practice our reading skills of making predictions, using clues from the text to infer, and checking for understanding. We can't wait to find out what happens next to Edward (I am asked multiple times each day if we will be reading Edward Tulane soon)! We've been working hard in 3B over the last couple of weeks on our reading and writing! Grade three is a big year of growth for students as readers and writers, and we've been practicing building our stamina in both of those areas.
In Reading Workshop, we've been talking about how grade three readers build a powerful reading life, read as if books are gold, and read tons of within-reach books. Students have especially enjoyed reading on the Chromebook at the end of this week and keeping track of how much they're reading in their reading log. Our Writing Workshop this year is starting with a focus on narrative writing. Our class has been hard at work examining examples of excellent grade three writing, learning about strategies to help us find writing ideas, and writing up a storm. It's a big job getting back into the swing of writing after the summer, but students are starting to get into more of a groove getting their ideas onto paper and having stamina during writing time. The students love getting to hear their peers' writing during our sharing time! To kick off our writing in grade three, each student wrote a postcard to a Millgrove staff member this week! Students told their recipient about their past few months, what they thought about school, and asked questions about the recipients summer. It will be exciting when we get some responses back in our mailbox! You can see your child's postcard on Seesaw.
Today was the inaugural I Read Canadian Day across the country, and we celebrated it in 2B! We read "Red is Best" by Kathy Stinson, "Purple, Green and Yellow" by Robert Munsch, "The Flying Canoe" by Roch Carrier, and "My Heart Fills with Happiness" by Monique Gray Smith. We love Canada, and Canadian literature!
2B had been working hard the past couple of weeks of school on Christmas stories for their families. We focused on crafting interesting plots and making our ideas clear to our audience (who were the students’ families). They made the wrapping paper, cards, and everything, and were very proud of their creations. We hope you enjoyed their lovingly authored Christmas stories
The students of 2B have been busy elves the past few weeks as they've been preparing their Christmas presents! They're all wrapped up now, and the class can't wait to give their gifts to their families at Christmas. Their love and care for their families was very evident in all the effort they put into this (top secret) project!
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Mrs. BarkerMrs. Barker is a grade three and literacy teacher at Millgrove School. She loves science and reading, and lives in a little brick house with Mr. Barker and her kids Jack and Ellie. Archive
June 2024
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