Literacy Program Overview:
The primary goal of the Huckleberry Hill literacy program is for students to become proficient readers and writers who enjoy literate lives and have the skills and strategies to become lifelong readers and writers.
Third grade literacy instruction at Huckleberry Hill School is designed to embed the Connecticut Core Standards in a balanced literacy approach to reading, writing, word study, speaking, and listening. Using a workshop approach teachers facilitate a learning environment that helps each student access the Connecticut Core Standards and grow to appreciate the value of a literate life.
Our literacy program relies on students, teachers, and parents/guardians all working together for the same goal: for students to become literate adults who not only love to read and write, but also have the necessary skills for literary excellence. Together this can become a reality.
Third grade students are developing, practicing, and reinforcing the reading habits of mind, skills and strategies of comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, phonics, and text structures that will enable them to become mature readers. This goal is accomplished through the careful use of the following reading workshop structures.
Mini-lessons: During these short, focused lessons teachers explain and model skills and strategies students need to progress as readers.
Independent Reading: During independent reading students read appropriately leveled texts and practice the skills and strategies presented in the mini-lesson and units of study. During this time students build stamina and fluency for reading. Teachers confer with students during independent reading time to review and teach skills and strategies necessary to build reading power.
Small Group Instruction: During small group instruction, teachers meet with small groups of students for a variety of purposes. At times, students may work with other students in a similar text at their instructional level, which is slightly more challenging than their independent reading level. Teachers instruct students in the skills and strategies necessary to successfully comprehend these texts independently. This teaching approach is called Guided Reading. At other times, teachers may see students in small groups for a specific purpose or to work on a strategy or skill that all the students in the group can benefit from.
Interactive Read Aloud: Students actively engage in a text that is read aloud by the teacher while practicing reading skills that are directly aligned to Connecticut Core Standards.
Students in third grade read a wide array of texts as they progress through the four units of study. The year begins with a unit which carefully reviews with students the structures of the reading workshop. This enables all students to function successfully in the reading workshop environment and feel like a member of the literate community. Students then explore narrative texts, informational texts, and poetry through a series of units. Throughout these units students will develop a sense of story, increase their vocabulary, and explore and examine the central message or theme in texts.
Units of Study:
Third grade students are engaged in reading through implementation of the following units of study:
· Building a Reading Life
· Reading to Learn: Grasping Main Ideas and Text Structures
· Character Studies
· Research Clubs: Elephants, Penguins, and Frogs, Oh My!
Students continue to receive instruction on and practice comprehension skills utilized by all readers, including:
Making text to text connections
Wondering (asking questions)
Picturing
Noticing
Figuring out (inferring)
Synthesizing
Summarizing
Application of these strategies, combined with targeted instruction, allows all third grade students to experience success as readers.
How can parents/guardians help their children with reading?
The most important and also the most rewarding ways to help your children are to read to them and read with them. These activities promote a wonderful dialogue and sharing of ideas. Parents/guardians can ask some of the types of questions listed below when reading to and with their children. These types of questions reinforce the Brookfield curriculum and the Connecticut Core Standards, and are similar to those asked of students as they “stop and jot” and write in their reading notebooks.
Questions that indicate understanding of the key ideas and details of the story:
What did you think or wonder about while you were reading the story?
What is the story mostly about?
Who are the characters in the story and what are they like?
What are their character traits?
Why do you think the main character decided to do what he/she did in the story? Be sure to describe his or her actions.
How does the main character change from the beginning of the story to the end?
How did the character’s actions in the story affect what happened?
What is the setting of the story? (Setting includes where and when.)
What is the problem in the story and how is it solved?
What important lesson did the character learn in the story?
Identify one important theme from the story.
What is the main idea of the article?
What is the text (or paragraph) mainly about?
If there is a vocabulary word that the student does not know, try to have the student figure it out from the context.
Questions that indicate that your child is able to analyze the craft and structure of the story:
These questions also involve higher-level thinking skills:
Make a sequence chain listing the most important events from the story. Describe how the story builds.
Describe the structure of the story. How does the beginning introduce the action? How does the conclusion wrap everything up?
What are the characters’ points of view? How are they the same? Different?
Why do you think the author wrote this book?
How do the nonfiction text features (e.g. captions, headings) help you understand the text?
How did the author organize the information in the non-fiction text? Describe the structure of events, ideas or information.
What was the author’s purpose for writing the text?
Explain what the author means when he/she says “____________________”.
Describe the character’s point of view in the text. Explain how your point of view is the same or different.
Using information from the text, what do you think is important to the author? What makes you think that this is important? Do you agree or disagree with the author’s point of view?
Questions that indicate that the student is able to integrate knowledge and ideas to deepen his/her understanding of the story:
These questions also involve higher-level thinking skills:
What part of the story did you think was the most important? Why? Use details from the story to explain why you chose that part.
Would you recommend this book to someone else? Why or why not?
Compare and contrast ________ and __________.
What did you notice about the illustrations? How do they add meaning?
How does the author support his or her ideas?
Select one text feature and explain how it helped you make meaning when reading the text.
What important facts did you learn from the article? How did the author support these facts?