Reading and writing and so much more!
Pajama Day/Camp Read a Lot for Team Cryer is Thursday!
Thank you to all of the parents who helped ensure your children finished writing and publishing their fables. This project was meant to be completed at school, but with all of these snow days I knew we would not be able to finish everything we needed to do before February vacation.
The goals of this project were many:
Identify the moral of a story,
understand how these stories were used to teach lessons about appropriate behavior,
follow complex written directions (the step-by-step publishing directions),
Use an organizer to plan and summarize a story,
understand how character traits effect what a character says and does.,
I had hoped to use a different resource for publishing these stories, but again, with the snow days, I was not able to show it to students. They are familiar with Google docs, since we use it a lot in both classrooms, so it was the best way to handle it.
Thank you again for your support.
Summarizing Reading
As you know, the 30-book Reading Challenge is continuing. As part of the challenge I ask students to summarize every third book they enter onto the website form. I am starting to see great improvement in their summaries, so I know it is helping students in more ways than may seem visible at first.
Recently, we began using a new planner that will be an even bigger help to students as they think about the most important parts of their reading. The organizer has students think about the following:
Somebody- the main character. Include the most important character traits
Wanted - What does that character want to do, get or be? This requires students to begin identifying the problem characters must solve throughout he story, which is also the main idea of the story.
But - What happens that the character cannot get or do what he/she wanted?
So - How does the character handle this or what does he/she do about it?
Then - What happens in the end? Students have to be careful in this section so they do not give away the ending.
Please encourage your children to use this planner before writing their summaries for the REading Challenge. We have used it in class a lot and will continue to do so. They are VERY good at it and they seem to enjoy trying to limit what they say to this format!
I have uploaded a copy of the document to the website so you can download and print it at home. It can be found on the Reading Log page. Click here to get there!
OUR NEW ADDITION
We are very lucky to have an intern from the University of Southern Maine working with our classes for the next couple of months. Sarah Hockhousen is a very talented young woman who is eager to get into the mix! Below is a letter of introduction from her.
Hello!
This year I have the pleasure to work as a student teacher who will be in class until May. I am a Graduate student at USM in the Teaching and Learning program. I also did my undergrad at USM and completed that over the summer. I have worked with several different age groups and in different schools; most recently I worked as an Ed Tech at the Morrison Center working in special ed. I am thrilled to be working here at Wells Elementary School during this exciting time.
I am looking forward to working here with Mr Kafkas. I firmly believe in the power of a great education. Third grade is one of the best places to start understanding the importance of making mistakes, learning from them, and moving forward into becoming better learners.
Thank you for welcoming me into your classroom!
- Ms. H
"I am who I am today because of the mistakes I made yesterday" - The Prolific Penman
