WA 3rd Grade Literacy

Washington 3rd grades will be starting by learning all about Pourquoi stories. Pourquoi is a French word that means "how" or "why". These stories are the legends of why or how different things in nature are the way that they are. For instance, how the camel got its hump, how the elephant got its trunk, or why the moon rises in the east and sets in the west. We will be focusing on organization, leads and endings, and wondrous words.

Once we learn all about how Pourquoi stories, students will begin to write their own "why" or "how" story. They will use the information we have learned in class to have great leads and endings and many $100 words to make their stories more interesting to the reader. At the end of the unit, they will get to share their books in the Author's Chair. Writing units tend to take a long time in enrichment classes. Only having them for 30 minutes, once a week, it takes quite a while to have them rough draft, revise, edit and publish. Once they start their rough draft, it is nice if they can work on it at home- also with the publishing and drawing their wonderful pictures!

(Hopefully) starting in March, we will begin reading one of my very favorite books "Walk Two Moons". We will be focusing again on character development and comparing the two books with how they showed bravery and courage. This book is also wonderful for working with the complicated plots of flashbacks and a story within a story. We will also focus on the theme of "never judge a man before you have walked two moons in their moccasins". This book should carry us close to the end of the year.