Writing Workshop

Third grade writers have been building their writing skills during Writing Workshop. They've been practicing each step  of the writing proces: pre-writing, drafting, revising, and editing. During our "Stoplight Paragraphs" lesson students learned paragraphs start with a topic sentence (green light), followed by supporting details (yellow light), and end with a conclusion (red light), We used green, yellow, and red markers to identify and highlight these types of sentences in paragraphs, then wrote our own paragraphs containing them.

Next, we practiced stretching sentences using descriptive details. Students learned sentences should answer the 5w's: who, what, when, where, and why. They answered the 5w's when they "stretched" their own sentences...

Our class continued to practice adding descriptive details during our  "Show Don't Tell" lesson. Students learned that good authors show, not tell, by using descriptions and details. Afterwards, they wrote a paragraph about an emotion...by describing the emotion without naming it. Students created self-portraits expressing the emotion to accompany the paragraphs, which are displayed on our classroom clothesline...

Finally, students learned how to use the "C.U.P.S" method to edit their writing during the editing process...

In Language Arts we've been learning about nouns, including common, proper, plural, and irregular. Students used paperclips and elbow pasta to show where apostrophes go in singular and possessive nouns...

and identified if plural nouns should end in s, es, or ies during a "Plural Noun Popcorn Sort"...

In Math, the class has been learning strategies to multiply including using arrays, number lines, and repeated addition. Here we are using yarn circles and our bodies to create arrays to represent multiplication equations...

In Science, we've started learning about the stages of matter and physical and chemical changes. During our "Magic Milk" experiment we created a chemical change. When food coloring was added to milk the colors stayed separated...

However, when we added a few drops of dish detergent the colors swirled together! The reason was the dish detergent activated the fat and protein in the milk to react with the food coloring...

Happy learning!