Reading/Writing/Mapping

Writing

This week the children drew detailed pictures of  monsters.  After exploring the use of adjectives, we wrote descriptive paragraphs describing the drawings. Today, each child was paired with a partner from Miss Rodriguez's class. The students sat back to back reading their paragraphs while their partner drew what was described.  Afterwards the children compared their partners drawing to their own monster picture to evaluate their use of  precise language and description in their writing.

Mapping

Ohio Social Studies standards in second and third grade include teaching the spatial and thinking skills students will need to be able to access, read, interpret and create maps.  The children loved finding Upper Arlington landmarks and their own streets on city maps. In pairs they created map keys and color coded, schools, parks and city service sites on U.A. maps . We are also creating a large scale model of Upper Arlington adding our own streets to the over-sized map.

Book Groups

Retelling vs. Summary 

Our book groups are working on many strategies to strengthen reading comprehension. 

After learning story elements (characters, setting, problem, plot) children learn to retell a story from their own point of view. Retelling includes many details and key points such as beginning, setting, characters, problems, sequence of events and resolutions.

A summary is a statement of the main idea of the story, it's very essence, in just a sentence or two. Reading Sam the Minute Man, Grace, Saumya, Bailey, Leo and Landon

summarized the book using a organizer titled: Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then.

Here is their first attempt at summarizing Sam the Minuteman

Somebody - The British
Wanted -  American money, food and land
But  Americans wanted to be their own separate country
So   Sam and other Americans fought the British and Sam's friend John was shot
Then The American won the battle and John lived after being shot and got well.

Sam the Minuteman  by Nathaniel Benchley book group

Predicting/ Story Mapping

White Bird by Clyde Bulla book group creating a story map including their predictions.

Making predictions is more than just guessing what is going to happen next. Predicting helps students become actively involved in reading and helps to keep their interest level high. Some of the other benefits of teaching students to make predictions are:

• Helps students to ask questions while they are reading
• Encourages students to skim or re-read portions of the story to better understand it or to recall facts about the characters or events
• Provides a way for students to monitor their understanding of the material

As students learn predictions skills, they will more fully comprehend what they have read and will retain the information for longer periods of time.

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