The Kitchen Sink for the Week of 9/4/12

Readers’ Workshop

Last week students were given their Reader’s Response Journals.  Students were also informed of our expectation that they read 25 chapter books by the end of the year.  Students should be tracking their success on the charts in their journal.  Ask to see your child’s journal to monitor their progress. 

We will also begin responding in our journals this week.  Expectations for student responses can be found in their journal.  Students are expected to respond once a week.  Journals will be collected each Friday for teacher review.      

Writers’ Workshop

This week we will continue working on the planning and early drafting stages of the memoir project.  At this point, students should have chosen a recipe that is important to them.  This recipe is being used to inspire a story about their life.  Students should have a significant memory of eating or cooking this recipe.  This week we will focus specifically on story structure with regards to sequencing.  As third graders, students are expected to be able to plan out their drafts in chronological order.  We will use our sequencing plans to begin writing our drafts at the end of this week.

Skills Block

There will be no spelling this week.  Instead, students will begin building their vocabularies through our Text Talk series.  We will read Montezuma's Revenge.  We will study the following words:  coaxed, mesmerized, misery, revenge, frustrated, and regret.

Besides vocabulary, we will also be studying the four types of sentences students will be using in writing (i.e. declarative sentences/statements, interrogative sentences/questions, imperative sentences/commands and requests, and exclamatory sentences/statements of strong feeling).  We will analyze these sentence varieties and discuss the appropriate punctuation.