Reader's Workshop in Room 40

This Monday we will begin Reader's Workshop! Our approach to reading in third grade will be quite a bit different than in the younger grades. Rather than focusing on figuring out individual words, our attention will be much more focused on comprehension strategies for understanding what we're reading.

Each week, we will spend our time with a different reading comprehension strategy, including predicting, inferring, cause and effect, fantasy and realism, author's purpose, and many others. However, instead of just reading short, low-interest stories out of a textbook, we'll instead be spending our time with highly interesting and exciting stories.

I've selected a large variety of different kinds of stories for us to read this year - funny stories, scary stories, mystery stories, sad stories, fantasy stories, historical stories, biographies, and even poetry.

Our first novel that we'll be reading together is Judy Bloom's classic - "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing".

On Monday, I'll introduce the book to the kids and we'll take a look at some of the vocabulary in the first two chapters of the book. I'll also introduce the strategy for the week:

Cause and Effect

On Tuesday, we'll read the first chapter together to further understand the strategy. On Wednesday and Thursday, students will read the second chapter in pairs. Then, on Friday, students will take a SHORT test on the skill of Cause and Effect. This is generally how our reading time will be spent throughout the year, though with different skills and different stories.