Thank you to all parents for attending fall conferences! Mrs. Childers and I were able to meet with almost every parent—something that doesn’t happen every year. That says a lot about the parent commitment with our great group of shared students. I appreciate all the support and faith that you have offered this year with our ELA curriculum. There aren’t as many papers that come home but rather students are reading and writing with great gusto and volume. The growth mindset I am seeing is fantastic! I can already see the confidence with which students share their thoughts. Thank you for your partnership in helping your child complete nightly reading homework. You play a vital role in helping your child be successful. Hats off! Welcome to Logun Morris who has joined us from Buffalo! We are happy to have him join our class. Congratulations to our Character Word of the Month student: Hunter Hancock! Hunter has demonstrated respect with a cheerful heart. He follows the rules, speaks to others in a kind manner, encourages, seeks ways to help, says please and thank you, and is a friend to everyone. Congratulations, Hunter, for being a role model of respect to all of us! Our character word of the month for November will be “citizenship.” What are we up to in ELA? Reading: With the completion of our Mystery Unit, students will begin reading informational text. Our new unit, “Reading to Learn: Grasping Main Ideas and Supporting Details” is preparing us for our research unit which also begins this week. The two units will pair perfectly! Tomorrow we will review nonfiction text features naming all the parts of the structure. Our focus will move to grasping the main idea. Students will learn the strategy of reading chunks of nonfiction text and creating mini-summaries using a “box and bullet” method of notetaking. Students will use the text structure to help find the main idea of a chunk of information. We will look for the “pop-out sentence” when the text is not already chunked for the reader. The pop-out sentence is the main idea. Sometimes we have to bullet the details in order to figure out the main idea and other times the main idea just pops out at us. Students will move to distinguish between the author’s opinion and our own. We will come to understand the author’s perspective and point-of-view. The last section of this unit will focus on narrative nonfiction—nonfiction information that is told in story form. This nonfiction unit will lead into our Missouri History Unit at the end of November. Our Missouri History Unit will include these topics: Early Missouri History (Native Americans, explorers, settlers, and immigrants); Missouri Geography; What Makes Missouri Special; and Famous Missourians. Third graders love social studies! This unit will build into the weeks leading up to Christmas. It’s high interest and will keep us busy during the holiday season. Writing: We are currently immersed in informational writing. Students began the unit learning that writers of informational text write to teach. Students wrote their first three page “books” about a topic that they felt they were experts on. Information came from their background knowledge and schema. Students learned how to divide the topic into three subcategories. These categories are the beginnings of visually seeing that texts are chunked into chapters and paragraphs. Students wrote and wrote. They learned to revise for elaboration by asking who, what, where, when, why, and how questions. They learned to include specific details—size, shape, color, number. They learned to strengthen their beginnings and endings. They learned that revisions don’t just occur at the beginning or end, but revisions occur anywhere in the text where clarification and explanations are needed. Sometimes revising includes deleting information that is not needed. We reviewed again the mechanics of writing with a focus on eliminating run-on sentences. We will finish the second bend, or section, of our informational unit with a focus on organization and detail tomorrow. Students are currently writing a chapter book with five chapters. Students learned that sometimes informational writers rehearse, talk through thoughts with a partner, or teach their content before putting it down on paper. They are the bosses of their own writing—they know what their writing needs, they make a plan of action, and then they do it. We edited for paragraphs and our last step will be creating headings and subheadings where applicable to give our books the type of text features expected in expository text. We will finalize our books by focusing on the final publication. Our writing celebration will end in a gallery walk where peers read each other’s books and leave positive feedback. Students find this to be powerful and rewarding. Writers write for an audience and when your audience learns from your expository writing, it feels like “mission accomplished!” Later this week, we will continue with informational writing but it will take on a new dimension—research! Students will begin a social studies project—state research- that will involve researching using books and the internet. This project will take us almost all the way to Christmas break. Phonics: We are word detectives in Room 114! Four days a week we review the letter-sound relationships of vowels and consonant digraphs as our daily warm-up. Following that student-led drill with Little Echo, our phonics owl, students tap words and spell them orally, use letter tiles, or dry erase boards. We look at a specific pattern spiraling previously presented patterns. We have learned the different spellings for r-controlled vowels, long e, and long a sounds. This week we will begin spellings for /oi/. Our next unit, Unit 12, papers will be sent home on Monday. The packet explains our current focus and gives you the review words, current words, and trick words that your student will be tested over at the end of this short unit. There are also a few practice pages for students to work with you at home. I can’t state strongly enough how valuable these lessons are for all students. Students who are high fliers with reading still need this practice for spelling. Assessments: This past week, students took the Mystery Unit post-assessment. This unit exam focused on two of our major standards for first quarter: making predictions and writing summaries. I will send home the results of this assessment in the near future. We used two books by William Steig to help us practice--Doctor DeSoto and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. William Steig is a two-time Caldecott Medal winner who wrote many books in the spirit of a fairytale/folktale with animals talking, magical elements, and a lesson to be learned. We will read more William Steig books later this year. He is a master at storytelling using imagery and figurative language. The first week of December we will be taking our reading iReady assessment to monitor for reading progress and growth. That report will be attached to the second quarter report card. This month I will begin DRA2 Progress Monitoring assessments which help determine students’ independent and instructional reading levels. I will share this information with report cards in December. The thrilling news is students are growing as independent readers! Sight Word Practice: A few parents were wondering about websites for sight word practice. You can get a list of Dolch sight words at https://sightwords.com/sight-words/dolch/ and Fry Sight Words at https://sightwords.com/sight-words/fry/. Have your child practice these words until they have automaticity. You can count this time as part of the reading homework. Knowing these words well will aid fluency. What’s coming up? BIS Reading Week, November 4-8: We will celebrate reading our shared book, Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus! Each day we will celebrate something from the book—the author, the characters, and the events. Monday: We are over-ly excited for our visit from author Dusti Bowling. Break out your overalls! **Family Reading Night, Monday, from 5:00-7:00. Free dinner and activities! If you want your book signed by the author, please bring with you. Tuesday: Aven and Connor were the best of friends. Grab a friend and dress as twins. Wednesday: Stagecoach Pass is a tourist attraction. Dress as a tacky tourist. Thursday: Aven was a great soccer player. Pick a sport and dress as an athlete. Friday: Aven loved to read on her kindle. Choose a book character and dress like him/her. Book Character Day and Fall Party: This Friday we will dress-up in book character costumes. Everyone loves this day! In the afternoon, our fall party will be held at 2:00. All parents are welcome to attend! Share Your Christmas: Bolivar Intermediate School Student Council is collecting items for Share Your Christmas beginning November 4 and running through December 5. Those items include: November 4-8: Canned food items November 11-15: Boxes of prepared foods such as macaroni and cheese, Hamburger Helper, etc. November 18-22: Gloves, socks, hats, and scarves December 2-5: New or like-new toys You are welcome to bring in any of the above—not necessarily the focus of the week--whenever it works well for you. Share Your Christmas is Bolivar at its best with everything going to families here in our community. Thank you for sharing! Friendly Reminder: Please be sure to send students with coats and gloves. The weather is unpredictable this time of year and students need to come prepared. I check Weatherbug each day before recess so students are aware of the temperature. I also do a jacket/coat check on the way to lunch. I want everyone to be protected from the elements during the time outside. Thank you for reminding your child to bring appropriate weather gear. First Baptist Church Clothing Give Away: Speaking of giving…FBC Bolivar will hold its annual free clothing shop next Sunday, November 10 from 2:00-4:00 pm in the Recreational Building. All clothing is clean and free! This is a great opportunity to stock up on warm clothes for the family. Thank you for your continued support! If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know. Blessings, Mrs. Endres November Dates to Remember: November 4-8 Reading Week (see above for dress-up days) November 4 Family Reading Night from 5:00-7:00 pm (free dinner) November 4 HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO NATALIE! November 8 Fall Parties at 2:00 pm November 15 Progress Reports sent home November 22 HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO HAYLEE! November 25-29 No School—HAPPY THANKSGIVING Second Quarter I Can Statements (Standards): Reading Retelling/Summary/Synthesis: When I finish a book, I can briefly summarize it in a way that shows what I know about the story and its story elements. Main Idea(s) and Supporting Details/Summary: I can say the main idea in more than just a word and am careful to name the main idea of most of the text. I can also choose important supporting details (or points) that go with the main idea. I summarize briefly, leaving out unimportant things. Cross-Text(s) Synthesis: When I read two texts (or parts of a text) that teach about the same subtopic, I can find the information on a subtopic from both texts (or parts of one text) and put that information together. Critical Reading: Growing Ideas/Questioning the Text: When I talk or write about a text (or a text set) I not only summarize it, I also grow my own ideas. Writing Punctuation: I punctuated dialogue correctly with commas and quotation marks. While writing, I used punctuation at the end of every sentence. I wrote in ways that helped readers read with expression, reading some parts quickly, some slowly, some parts in one sort of voice and others in another. Informational Overall: I taught readers information about a subject. I put in ideas, observations, and questions. Informational Lead: I wrote a beginning in which I got readers ready to learn a lot of information about the subject Informational Transitions: I used words to show sequence such as before, after, then, and later. I also used words to show what didn’t fit such as however and but. Informational Ending: I wrote an ending that drew conclusions, asked questions, or suggested ways readers might respond. Informational Organization: I grouped my information into parts. Each part was mostly about one thing that connected to my big topic. Informational Elaboration: I wrote facts, definitions, details, and observations about my topic and explained some of them. Informational Craft: I chose expert words to teach readers a lot about the subject. I taught information in a way to interest readers. I may have used drawings, captions, or diagrams.
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AuthorHello! My name is Heidi…I love my family, the Lord, and chai tea lattes! I’m a wife to an amazing husband, mama to four wonderful kids, new Grammy to a cute baby boy, and a chubby 3rd grade teacher. (I've eaten too many birthday cupcakes!) I love people, learning, and creating. Thanks for stopping by! May you be blessed today as you bless others. Archives
March 2020
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