Nonfiction Reading of All Kinds!

What a busy time it is in our classroom! It is hard to believe we soon will be entering our third unit in reading. We have read and enjoyed an extensive unit on nonfiction. The unit began with expository nonfiction which is mainly facts and information and highlighted with many text features such as diagrams, maps, and photographs with captions. We've had several lessons on 'reading around' an unknown word to figure out the meaning. We found that nonfiction author's uses context clue words such as: is, or, called etc to aid the reader. Other times there are clues such as synonyms, antonyms or examples that help guide us to the unknown word's meaning. We focused on writing main idea and detail as well as using this structure to write a summary.
The unit finished up with a focus on narrative nonfiction, which featured biographies. We took a look at several individuals such as children's book illustrator, Ezra Jack Keats and writer, speaker, activist, Helen Keller. We learned in order to read a biography well we need to pay attention to the life story of the subject, but also to gain facts and information about the time period the person lived in, and to take note of the way the subject led his/her life. We also found that very often the life lessons the subject learns are lesson for anyone to learn including the reader!
      Since are close to completing the nonfiction reading and students have gained skills in this area, I'd like to take the time to mention two fantastic website for the whole family. The activities on these websites would support the learning  that we have done in class. Don't worry too much about reading levels just choose a topic of interest to all of you and Enjoy!
Non-fiction reading that Kids Love: The following article discusses areas of the newspaper that are appropriate and enjoyable for kids to read. The article is written by Scholastic especially for parents.
Reading Adventure Packs for Families: Reading rockets is a website for teachers, students and parents. It has lots of information about many different aspects in reading. I will link you to this site again and again in the future. It is an awesome resource that I use in class as well. This link will take you to a page that has Adventure packs of books specifically designs for parent and children to investigate together. The creators have paired excellent fiction stories with logical nonfiction topics. For example, the outstanding author, Patricia Polocco has a book called, The Bee Tree which has a theme of maintaining stamina to learn to do something worthwhile and then enjoying the rewards. This has been paired with a nonfiction book, The Life and Times of the Honeybee by Charles Micucci. There is a free PDF that can be downloaded which provides questions and activities for you and your children to further explore the topics. Either book on its own would have great value, together they will create a wonderful learning experience for you and your child that will be treasured.
Keep these ideas in mind as the colder months approach and there is more indoor time to be spent together.
Finally, I am attaching a link so that you will have a small selection of before, during and after reading activities for you to discuss as your child reads nonfiction books at home.
Nonfiction questions 1- Just nonfiction
Nonfiction questions 2 - Fiction and Nonfiction
How to Ask Questions to Check Comprehension - Blog article
I hope these are helpful tools for you and your family,

Reading Comprehension Strategies at Work!

Room 24 students are working hard to get to know characters in the books we are reading. As third grade readers who have crossed the threshold from learning to read to reading to learn, we have started working hard to utilize reading comprehension strategies. The strategies for comprehending text are: Predicting, Questioning, Connecting, Visualizing, Inferring and Summarizing. A brief description is:
Predicting: Using clues from the text to make good guesses about what might happen next in the story.
Questioning: Asking and answering questions about the text while reading.
Connecting: Making connections helps bring meaning to the text. There are three types of connections. Text to Text, Text to Self and Text to World. These are likenesses drawn between another text or the world and the book being read.
Visualizing: Readers create a picture in his/her mind based on the author's words.
Inferring: Using what was read in the text and the reader's background knowledge to figure out messages that are not directly stated.
Summarizing: Paraphrasing a section of the text to verify your own understanding.

Each day during our whole class lesson I model the use of reading comprehension strategies that a good reader should do while reading. Slowly students take over and begin to share their thinking, about our whole class reading and then practicing this by jotting think notes about his/her independent reading. As we read we are using these reading comprehension strategies to better understand the text and "figure out" the characters we are reading about. Your child will be familiar these strategies and can explain how he/she uses each one during at home reading time

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Following Characters Into Meaning

Gooney Bird Greene

One of the most important ideas we discuss in our character study unit is that the big ideas in the text center on the people. After all, don't we all read stories to slip into another person's life and experience what the characters are experiencing.

As we begin our unit on Following characters into meaning, we have started a shared reading of Gooney Bird Greene. This book, written by Lois Lowry, introduces us to a delightful character that has a lot to teach us about being your own unique self. Gooney Bird takes over Mrs. Pidgeon's class of second graders and shares unusual stories such as, How Gooney Bird Greene Came From China on a Flying Carpet and How Gooney Bird Greene Got Her Name. These sound like fictitious titles but, Gooney Bird professes she tells only "Absolutely True Stories" and we as readers discover she does!
Lois Lowry makes it easy for readers to become part of Miss Pidgeon's class and really get to know Gooney Bird well.  Her incredible writing has not only helped us come to truly know Gooney Bird Greene, but it has also provided many opportunities for us to discuss the way a reader comes to know any character. The big idea we are discovering is when you follow a character into meaning you grow ideas about the character by noticing: 

• how the author describes the character's appearance and personality
• what the character says and how it is said
• the characters actions 
• how other characters treat the main character

We are realizing some characters are round characters, or fully developed characters and secondary characters are usually flat characters, or we only learn a bit about them.

When you are discussing characters in fiction reading with your child see how they respond to these ideas with their at home independent reading.

Anyone have a good book?

We have just completed our first reading unit entitled, "Building a Reading Life". In this unit the students learned some of the traits of a person who has an active, healthy reading life. We learned that:

• We chose our attitude toward reading...and it may-as-well be a curious, interested attitude toward books. This allows us to want to read, not only when we have to, but because we want to!
• We've come to recognize that readers need many hours of high success reading. This is time when they are deep into the world of their books. We learned about connecting to the text, visualize the author's words, predicting what we think will come next based on the author's words, noticing when things change and questioning the changes and finally summarizing to insure that we are understanding the text. We will have additional lessons on how we can use these strategies more precisely in the future, but for now we all know they are an important part of being an active reader.
• We found out through several characters that reading longer and stronger requires persistence and perseverance. Every student in room 24 is now tracking the number of pages he/she is reading in Reading Workshop to try to improve his/her reading stamina.

We are now working on our end of unit project that involve each student recommending a book that has been read in third grade to his/her classmates. We are briefly writing what makes the book worthy of a recommendation and illustrating our favorite part. Then the students will "advertise" their book to the class in hopes of getting others interested in reading the book.

In our next unit, we are on to "Following Characters Into Meaning"! Stay tune for more information on how we are learning to understand characters based on the text.

Please Take a Minute to Respond My Blog Survey

     

This year has been an exciting year of learning and growth for the students as well as myself. I have used the classroom blog to try to keep you up to date on the units we've covered in reading, writing, math, science and social studies as well as some of the cool projects we've completed with technology.

     At this time, I would like to ask you to take an 8 question survey to give me your feedback about weather or not the blog was a helpful tool in understanding your child's day of learning in room 24. Click on the the word "Survey" below and the link will take you right to the 8 questions.

Thank you for your participation!

SURVEY

We have just begun our last reading unit of study and it is a big one! Folk Tales, Fairy Tales and Fables is an interesting unit because there are literary references related to these early stories that occur in modern day literature. These old stories' lessons and morals crop up in today's reading, so a student who is familiar with the original story has a deeper level of comprehension.   We will read several Cinderella stories from different cultures. Each story has been adapted to reflect and teach from the point of view of the culture that is featured. We will notice the archetypes, character traits of the main characters, similarities and differences to the classic Cinderella and finally try to determine the reason the particular culture has told their version the way they did. Ask your child what he or she is learning through these classic tales.

 

Busy**Busy**Social Issues, Fractions and Native Americans**Busy**Busy

Yes, we are! Busy that is! It seems that since April vacation, the world is spinning faster! We have many smaller units in our math, science, and social studies programs, so it seems like we are moving through many topics at this point of the year.
In reading, we are currently in our Social Issues Unit. We have read fiction stories that you may recognize: The Hundred Dresses and Thank You, Mr. Falker. Both stories while having several small social issues share the the social issue of bullying. After reading and discussing the books in depth, we decided that we needed to gather some information about the topic of bullying. In order to do this we watched a video that explained exactly what bullying is. We learned that there are three types of bullying: physical, verbal and social bullying. We also learned that the easiest way to solve the problem of bullying is to be kind to everyone. After the short video we read a non-fiction article that discussed what to do if you experience bullying as a bystander or as the victim. The students in Room 24 are armed with a 3 step plan No!, Go!, Tell! The one word cues remind the students how to handle a bullying situation and how to turned it around sooner, rather than later. We finished off with writing advice to either Patricia, the character in Thank You, Mr. Falker who was bullied or Wanda, the character in The Hundred Dresses who was bullied. Students needed to include information we gathered in the video and the non-fiction reading in the advice response.
Additionally, we have read about the condition of poverty, homelessness, and the desire for education or a home of ones own in several different book clubs. All of these books had themes and sub-themes. Students read to recognize the characters longings, and  the way in which the characters reached his/her dream. It is fair to say that we have hit home the idea of "working long and strong is the best way to make life dreams come true!" Along the way we read non-fiction articles and watched TED talk video, CBS 60 Minute excerpts and agency informational videos to learn more about how these real people worked toward their dreams with the assistance of volunteers and specific organizations that supported their in need.

In math, students are currently learning about equivalent fractions by way of a nine day center rotation. These hands on centers are focused on comparing fractions to 1/2, identifying the fractional parts on a number line and placing fractions on a number line. These concepts are far more challenging than our introduction unit on fractions last trimester, so the time invested in these ideas is well worth-the-while.

We have completed a short unit on Native Americans. We had small groups read short informational articles on the tribes of the Plateau, and the Plains. Other groups read to understand The Inuit and The Aleut or the Pueblo. Each group focused on common cultural aspects such as food, clothing and shelter of the tribe. After completing art work and writing to show what we learned, the entire class did a museum walk to share our learning. Ask you child if he/she like the museum walk and what was learned by doing the museum walk.

As I said it has been busy around room 24 and there is no sign of it letting up until June!