Third Grade Squad

LITERACY Writing:  In the last two weeks, the students learned how to write in a poem format. They learned what the word stanza  means and how to organize their writing. The theme of the poem was friendship. First, I read the book "Don't Need Friends" to the class. The class discussion was about how the characters (a rat and a stray dog) changed their minds about having friends throughout the story. As a whole class, the students filled an anchor chart titled "How I Can Be A True Friend". Secondly, the class read a poem titled "Friends" that followed a pattern that the students would follow in their final copy. They thought about activities they enjoyed doing with their friends and two things that they would need to carry out the activities. The students picked four activities to write about and plugged it into the poem's stanzas.  The students continue to edit their sentences using the acronym  CUPS  to remind them about what to look...

LITERACY Book Study:  Two weeks ago, I read the book In My Heart  by Jo Witek  to the class to serve as inspiration for our upcoming writing project starting next week. This book explores a full range of emotions, describing how children describe how they feel physically, inside. The book uses language that is lyrical but also direct. The vocabulary allows children to practice articulating and identifying their own emotions. After the reading, the students made a list of feelings they can feel in their hearts. On loose leaf paper students sketched out two feelings that they associate with the most. They had to show the following:  how a feeling made their body feel (i.e. sweaty, heart beating, warm) an animal that reminds them of that feeling something in nature that is similar to the feeling, and a colour that they associate to the feeling They chose one feeling to write about for their final copy and tried to write their paragraph in a style simi...