We Are Investigating the Mystery Genre!

We are almost done reading the whole class read aloud mystery, Lucky Lottery by Ron Roy. The students are loving the book and we are having MANY opportunities for shared thinking and discussion about features of the mystery genre.

Students have just begun reading in a just right reading group. This will allow them to more closely read and discuss a mystery with the support of other classmates. We will work in these groups for about a week and then each student will take on his/her own mystery book to apply all that has been learned and practiced in whole group and small group reading. These are the five book that we are sharing in 6 groups.

I have copied 2 anchor charts. These serve as the basis for our discussion in whole class and small group.  These questions can help you "speak the same language" when you and your child are discussing any mystery! Happy Sleuthing!

One last reminder: We are working on vocabulary for the mystery unit. Students have received the first set of flash cards to be used as nightly practice. Another set will be given on Tuesday. During the unit students are working to use the new vocabulary in whole class and small group discussions. Please help your child practice the vocabulary by way of a memory style game or simply flashcard practice each night. At the end of the unit there will be quiz as part of the final assessment.

Happy 2016 to All!

Happy New Year to all of my students and their families! May 2016 bring you peace and happiness in all that you do!

Our classroom will be incredibly busy this week as student show all that we've learned about nonfiction reading by independently reading a nonfiction text of his or her choice and completing the end of unit project. Additionally we will wrap up our habitat web research project and begin our habitat essay and mini presentation board. All while we will continue on with our word study program, math unit on division, and finish the week having our Antarctica/Penguin vocabulary quiz. Nothing like hitting the ground running!
       

       

This week I will begin our mystery read aloud, modeling the appropriate thinking and think notes for the genre. I like to use, Lucky Lottery an A to Z Mystery by Ron Roy. It is a just right model for many of the mystery characteristics students will be expected to recognize in their future group and independent reading. Some of the genre characteristics that we will experience together are cliff hangers, red herrings, and an integral setting. Ron Roy is a very descriptive author using many similes and idioms that we discuss as a class. We will also visit Ron Roy's website. Stay tuned for future blogs with pictures of our in class anchor charts. If you are interested in talking to your child about the genre study or asking questions as they are reading, you will both be able to speak the same language.

     During our mystery study we will also listen/watch some mystery books being read to us on Tumble books to gain experience with note taking while watching and listening, not just as part of an independent reading activity. This is really a very specific skill set that will be needed when students take the Smarter Balanced Assessments later this year! Practice in this area is beneficial!

Learning Farm Opportunity

                                      

I wanted to let everyone know that I have signed up for a trial account with Learning Farm
https://www.learningfarm.com/. I did this so students could use the Main Idea and Details link to practice at one of our centers last week.
The good news is that it is a one month trial account, set to end around 12/30/15. If you would like to have your child practice reading skills we have learned in class, they could log on at home and play various games as they have time during the next month. There is also a math tab. Please understand this is not assigned homework, just a fun opportunity for anyone who is interested. 
Login:  student's first name.
Password: abc123
Enjoy!

Its Monday! What Are You Reading?

This week we will continue our exploration of nonfiction text structure by delving into a nonfiction book called, Animal Homes.  This fascinating book immediately engages readers by asking why people need homes. The author reveals that animal homes serve the same basic functions as our homes do— they provide shelter, a place to store and make food, and a safe place to raise families. This topic fits perfectly with our science unit on Habitats! (Double Bang for our Buck!)
On Monday, I will model reading two chapters and determining the main ideas and supporting details. On Tuesday, Students will work with a partner for support. They will read the next chapter and will collaborate to decide on a main idea statement and supporting details. Finally, on Wednesday students will move toward independently finding the main idea and details of the last chapters.

Next, the process of determining main idea and detail will become hands on with center practice on our shortened conference days. 

Students will work on four centers:

• Each student will use laptops to visit web sites with main idea/detail games. 
• Other centers will feature manipulatives to organize and categorize big ideas and match details that support. 
• Finally, small groups will meet with me to read a passage at the appropriate reading level and write a main idea statement and details.

This will wrap up a busy short week with a big focus on determining main idea and detail. This is a  comprehension strategy that will prove important in reading nonfiction text!

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.