Parent+Letter+-+January+26,+2012

Dear Families,

Today we began focusing on our learning goal of determining importance and ultimately – SUMMARIZING. We completed an "anticipation set" by collaboratively discussing the author's video, the book cover and the opening chapter. Each student elaborated three predictions based upon this warm-up activity and developed several questions.
 * We will the CONFIRM or DENY their predictions as we read, noting the TEXTUAL EVIDENCE to support our findings in our reading journal.
 * We will also ANSWER any questions that we may find in the text and record them.
 * Finally, as we finish reading the assigned chapter - Las Uvas (Grapes), we will determined the FOUR MAIN IDEAS/EVENTS of the first section. You will find a copy of the work that I modeled in class. I am sorry that it is messy, but the important idea is that we were thinking together and we do NOT need to necessarily BE artists – we just need to capture the main idea with a drawing and perhaps embellish a little with speech bubbles. The second step was to turn each picture into the 4 main idea / event sentences. Next week we will add a SUMMARY TOPIC SENTENCE and discuss summary verbs and transitions.

Please support your student as they read each week and help them to complete the summary sheet in much the same fashion as the example. If they should have anything they want to add to the THINK NOTE/QUESTION/PREDICTION portion of the sheet, that is excellent. Since the space is small, please feel free to have the kids write in their journal.

Thank you and once again, if you have any questions please feel free to email or stop by the room at 3:00.

Sincerely,

Tammy Falcone tfalcone@lps.k12.co.us

Next week third graders will begin to use our 4/5 Current Event Summary Template and post with the older students.