Our Community of Learners

Our Community of Learners

Cooperative Learning:

I work with the children to develop their skills in a cooperative learning setting. We work on standards that are used throughout the curriculum. These Cooperative Learning Standards include:

• Practice Active Listening

• Explain Your Ideas and Tell Why

• Everyone Participates

• Helping and Encouraging Others

• Complete Tasks

The students earn team points when their group uses these standards. We continually do Team Building Activities to help the children practice these standards and how to work together.

Reading

Reading skills are developed as the children begin applying a variety of reading strategies, which help them to decode words and understand the text. They learn phonics for sounding out words, reading the text again and thinking about what they reread, and reading on to find meaning for unfamiliar words and thinking for understanding.

Phonics:

Third grade uses the Fundations phonics program that was also used during Kindergarten,1st, and 2nd grade at HHH. The children will be building on their skills and building a strong foundation for reading and writing.

It is important to establish good writing habits through using correct pencil grip and writing position. The Wilson Font provides a basic form cursive writing. Letters are practiced with sky writing, tracing, and writing practice.

Phonological awareness is the understanding that spoken language consists of the following parts that we will be reviewing everyday:

* A spoken sentence consists of separate words.

(Word awareness)

* A word consists of separate syllables.

(Syllable awareness)

* A syllable consists of separate sounds, or phonemes.

(Phoneme awareness)

Literacy Block Using Benchmark and Balanced Literacy:

During our literacy block, we begin with phonics activities. The children work with a partner and they help each other learn the sounds and spelling through practice. The children will be building the literacy skills using "Benchmark" reading program. We gather for Listening Comprehension where we focus on objectives that help students understand different parts of a story (characterization, setting, compare and contrast, etc.) or activities such as following directions. They use the “Think, Pair, and Share” strategy and graphic organizers to help build an understanding of listening objectives. The children then move into their guided reading groups where they can work with books that challenge their reading abilities. They read independently, read and work with a partner, review vocabulary, ask questions, answer questions with a focus on the listening comprehension objective, and complete Adventures in Writing Tasks all connected to the story they are reading. The teams discuss and share their ideas throughout their reading response activities.

Read & Respond Nightly Reading:

The children must read 15 to 20 minutes out loud each night to an adult or sibling. They will be given a weekly Read & Respond Log that needs to be completed every night and signed by the listener. The children need to write one or two sentences about what they read. At the beginning of the year these sentences may be simple, but as they get more confident in their writing skills, they should move into more complex responses with connections to the events in the story.

Writing:

We use Common Core writing strategies and the Lucy Calkins writing program during our Writer’s Workshop time. These are a series of lessons that help the children develop their writing skills as well as develop the love of writing. They learn to write stories that have a beginning, middle, and ending as well as draw events that represent meaning to their stories. They write fiction and non-fiction pieces using research to enhance their ideas. Each child is given the opportunity to conference about their writing with the teacher and their peers before publishing their stories.

Mathematics:

HHH uses the math program called Stepping Stones Mathematics. They work with hands-on activities using group math talks to develop a foundation in mathematical thinking. The students will learn to how to communicate their ideas both verbally and in writing to explain their thinking.

Science and Social Studies:

I web the Science and Social Studies Standards together into thematic units that help the children get a deep understanding of both areas. The children will do hands-on Science and Social Studies activities where they work together and explore committees. Our reading and writing assignments are also connected to these content areas.

Please see the Science and Social Studies tab under "More" to read about these units.