January 31, 2018

The Story of Ruby Bridges

Today we read The Story of Ruby Bridges as part of our look at the Civil Rights Movement. As always, the students were especially interested in listening to this story because it is, of course, a true story. 

To help the boys and girls further develop their non-fiction writing skills and to prepare them for EQAO, I'm asking them to answer the following question in class over the next few days:  

How is Ruby Bridges brave? Give evidence from the text and your own ideas to support your ideas.  


We call this type a "Reading Response With Evidence Plus" because we're asking the student to provide their own information (the plus).  For short, we refer to these questions as RRWEPs.  


Earlier in the school year, students learned about "reading response with evidence" questions or RRWEs. You can read more about  them in an older blog post here

January 30, 2018

Henry's Freedom Box

Last week, I read the boys and girls the story called "Henry's Freedom Box" by Ellen Levine. I use this text to launch our study of the Civil Rights Movement as part of our Literacy Block.  

When we expose children to rich, high quality texts that are based on real-world events and then ask them to write about it, something happens to their writing. In my experience, students are far more interested in stories when they know they are "true stories". This interest translates into very high quality, very passionate writing.

This text in particular is a great one for sparking all kinds of thick questions and rich discussions about respect for all of God's people and the rights and freedoms we are all entitled to. 








It's also a great story for helping kids to make text-to-world connections, which can often be one of the hardest types of connections to teach as so many real-world events might not be age-appropriate. When done sensitively and sensibly, teaching children about the civil rights movement at this age can take their writing to a new level.    

There are three types of connections we teach children to make while they read:
  • text to self (What does this remind me of in my life?) 
  • text to text (Does this remind me of something else I've read) 
  • text to world (What does this remind me of in the real world?) 
But it's not just about making connections to what we read. If we focus too much on connecting to the text, we can miss out on key content and meaningful learning because we're too "self-focused" to so speak, as a reader. If we focus too heavily on "What does this remind me of in my own life?", it's possible readers quite literally, miss the point of the text.  

My hope is that with this unit of study, comes a shift in reading for my students. My goal is that they'll begin to read more as historians and think about the texts on a higher level. I'm hoping they'll ask really thick questions about the content they're reading, but also of themselves. Questions like: 
  • From whose perspective is this story being told?  
  • How do I feel about what I'm reading?
  • Where do I stand on this topic?
  • Who am I upset with in this story? 
  • What are the possible solutions to this problem? 
  • Did my thinking change throughout the text?
We're going to spend a lot of time on questions: asking questions about the content (e.g. Dr. King's work, segregation, slavery, etc.) and also questions of ourselves as readers.  While we do this, we'll look for ways to provide evidence from the text to support our ideas and opinions.  It's a lot to ask of a third-grade student, but I know they're up for the challenge.  
This has always, always been a turning point in my class. My students' reading and writing always improves, but so does their sense of social justice and genuine interest in learning more about the world around them.  



Some questions posed from 2017






Click on the link below for more information on Henry's Freedom Box. We'll spend the next four or so weeks talking and writing about the Civil Rights movement as part of our Literacy Block/Writer's Workshop.    

Henry's Freedom Box  

Here are some of the other books we have in our classroom library. I'll read many of these to the boys and girls in the coming weeks.  




January 29, 2018

It's like raaaay-yaaaaain on your wedding day...

I'm gonna do it! 
I'm goin' where no Third Grade teacher has gone before!* I'm teaching the kids the meaning of "ironic"!  
So many of the reading responses questions we explore now and especially those on EQAO can be answered quickly and easily with "It's ironic", and rather than kids fret over trying to explain "What's funny about a man named Mr. Cheeseman who hates cheese?", how about I just teach them irony?  

It's not easy, but I think we're up to the challenge. 
We've talked so far about how irony is a funny or unexpected surprise, but not quite like a Christmas morning surprise, more of a "Hey that sign for fasteners isn't fastened to the pole!" type of surprise.  I've been referring to irony as a sort of quirky twist.  


We'll continue to focus on this over the next week or so. I think it can really be a helpful literary device for kids to learn because understanding irony means thinking critically about what we read, see and hear. I also suggested that the kids pay really close attention to some of the jokes in the cartoons they watch, because there are often great examples of irony to be found!  

*this fact has not actually been proven 


January 19, 2018

100th Day T-Shirt Fun!

I'll talk more about this with the kids in the coming days, but I'm so excited, I want to announce our 100th Day of School "project" today! It's not really a project-project, it's mostly just for a lot of fun and a great way to celebrate! 

We've been counting down to the 100th day since that very first day back in September. 


The hundredth day of school is a really big deal! 


I'm asking the boys and girls to design their own 100th Day t-shirt. They can use a new or old shirt, it doesn't matter, as long as it shows 100 of something! 


I'll ask the kids to wear them to school on Tuesday February 13th.  That's the day where we'll celebrate both the 100th day AND Valentine's Day!  


This project is limited only by imagination! I tried this back in 2015 for the first time and it was a real hit!  


Have a look at this post from that year to see some of the great shirts kids came up with!

100th Day of School 2015 
  
 

January 15, 2018

Attributes of...deliciousness!

Fun Friday was so much fun and oh so delicious!  
It was Puzzle Day aaaannnnddd we made bread!  As part of our discussion of the types of attributes this week, I surprised the kids with a tasty treat!  
This week, we've learned about the eight or so ways you can describe an object. It's a starter list and we know there are many other ways you might be able to describe the features and attributes of an item.  I wanted the boys and girls to really understand and retain what we mean by "What is the item's state of matter?"  I explained that the bread-making process takes us through all three: liquid, gas and solid.  




So after we talked about the states of matter that our bread would experience and then off we went to enjoy Puzzle Day! Imagine the fun we had working together on puzzles while our bread baked!  We put the bread in around 11:00 and then three hours later,  we enjoyed a delicious, warm treat after the puzzles were completed! 





Room 208 was certainly the place to be last Friday! 








January 13, 2018

And they're off!

On Tuesday, we brainstormed all the exciting and wonderful things that we look forward to in 2018. We came up with quite an extensive list as you can see! 

From there, we began working on our "This year is gonna rock" craftivities.  The kids were so creative, they even decided to name their characters! We had names such as "Roxy" and "Lorraine, the Rock Johnson"  LOL!  









On Wednesday, we'll begin writing about why this year is going to rock.  Students will be asked to use the feedback from their Mrs. Claus assignments (coming home Friday for signatures) to help them improve or enhance this writing piece.  


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