These students have made reading goals continuously since the beginning of the year. Most have become more fluent, and most have continued to grow as readers by going up levels, but what makes me the most proud, is how so many look forward to reading books on their own and to our read aloud time during the day. There is an audible moan when it is time to stop and move on to our next activity. For some, their love of books and reading has grown. They are becoming more confident, taking risks with new series, and reading with more stamina. I am proud of these kids!
It really is quite amazing when I step back and think about it to have a classroom full of third graders be so silent that you can hear a pin drop. That is often the case during reading and that is the case as I type this. Looking around our classroom now makes my heart so incredibly happy. Every student is reading their book for book club and searching for signposts as they read what they have assigned themselves for the day. They have been reading for at least 15 minutes and every single student is lost in their book that they chose. Soon, each student will meet in their book club and they will discuss if they found any signposts and what that made them think. They will make predictions together and talk about what is happening to their characters.
These students have made reading goals continuously since the beginning of the year. Most have become more fluent, and most have continued to grow as readers by going up levels, but what makes me the most proud, is how so many look forward to reading books on their own and to our read aloud time during the day. There is an audible moan when it is time to stop and move on to our next activity. For some, their love of books and reading has grown. They are becoming more confident, taking risks with new series, and reading with more stamina. I am proud of these kids!
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I was not aware of the signposts until I became an educator and read the book Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst, so I am assuming many of you are not familiar with them either. To help at home, a signpost flip book is coming home that explains each signpost and the one question to ask for each signpost. Please, enforce these at home when your child does his/her reading homework of a fiction book. You can ask questions after reading like, "What signposts do you find in your reading today?" or you can say before reading "I want you to look for the Again and Again signpost today and see if you find any and tell me about it after you read."
If you are a reader yourself, I encourage you to try them out in your own fiction books that you are reading. I do, and I was shocked at how looking for them and finding them helped me to think about the story more deeply. Students will be looking for the signposts in the book that they are reading independently for their book club. It is my hope that they find all six of them and discuss what they are finding and thinking with their book club. Here is what the flip books look like. Please keep these at home and refer to them throughout the year. Your child will be using these in fourth grade as well. Beginning in January, I read aloud a note written on a heart to a student each day. The heart said “What I like about you.” Then, students had the opportunity to write what they like about each student. We put the heart and messages in an envelope and then sealed it until February 13th. The kids got a kick out of reading all their messages. Passing out Valentine’s is a very serious job to third graders. I love watching them take their jobs so seriously. Time to feast! Thank you all those who contributed to our Valentine’s feast.
Cheyann was our super hero a couple of weeks ago. She always has such an awesome smile on her face and seems ready for the day every morning she comes to school. Thanks for being safe, respectful, and responsible!
Students have been working so hard on their stories. We made sure to write a beginning that includes our character and setting, use transitional phrases, use details about our characters to make our story come to life, organize our writing in sequential order, tell our story bit by bit instead of a summary, and worked on writing an ending well. Students were excited to share what they had written so far and get some feedback from their peers.
When students finish their work early, in the morning before class starts, or on choice board Wednesdays, students can choose to work on a puzzle that we just leave out.. Here are a few kids who love to work on them. They finished this one up today.
This truly is an amazing bunch of kids. Looking at their "High Fives" brought tears to my eyes. They know they are awesome and I hope they never forget it!
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Mrs. Ellis's Class
Learning & laughing our way through third grade. Archives
June 2020
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