The Smithosians Mrs. Smith Grades 3-4 Oh, October, where did you go? What a fun month we had in Grades 3-4 as we enjoyed the many activities that came and went with the month of October. Between baseball, carnivals, cooler weather, and loads of candy, somehow we managed to squeeze in loads of academics as well! In writing workshop, publishing was fast and furious. Students cranked out a plethora of books they have been working on during workshop. Student books ranged from personal narratives about fishing trips, to poetry books filled with tongue twisting rhymes, to fictional stories about crazy characters that take us on adventures in alternate universes. Students were observed in writing workshop by several visiting teachers from local districts. The visiting teachers were amazed at the depth of conversations students engaged in during share time. “Wow! Their discussion of character depth and the creativity of dialogue was incredible.” Speaking of dialogue, students continued to hone their craft of dialogue usage by patterning their characters’ dialogue after the novel we share together through the read aloud. After analyzing conversations from our read aloud, Wonder, students realized their characters’ words and thoughts help to create personalities and give voice to the characters. And because we use our laptops and Google Docs to compose, students have been practicing their editing skills, ensuring they are indenting and punctuating dialogue correctly with quotation marks. In reading workshop, students continued to log their daily reading into their Google Sheets reading log. Students love recording the number of pages they read along with the number of minutes they read. As they log their daily habits, they see bar graphs increase that show how close they are to reaching their trimester reading goals. We finally finished our read aloud, Wonder, by R.J. Palacio. We are excited to see the major motion picture on the opening day. Our class will meet at the local theater in the afternoon of November 17th to watch the Wonder movie. We can’t wait! Many students were so inspired by this wonderful book about kindness, they purchased their own copies in the book fair. Finally, because so many students and parents ordered monthly from Scholastic, we received many new titles to add to our classroom library. Thank you for your orders as they help our library grow! Nothing is more important for our readers to blossom than the opportunity to have loads of choices of just right books, and boy, do they 11
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