Daily 5: Word Work

Because today is Friday and we have already had our weekly spelling test, our students spent this afternoon's word work practice time using math and social studies content words. We practiced spelling words like digit, addend, sum, property, parentheses, estimate, rural, urban, suburban, and community. It is just as important for us to practice our content words as the sight spelling words each week. We know that word work not only improves our spelling but our reading and writing skills as well. 

The different word work stations we've been practicing are stamping, magnetic letters, white boards, and playdoh with cookie cutter letters.

Read to Self, Daily 5: Practicing Stamina

Our third graders have been working really hard to build up their reading stamina over the past month of school. We started with a very low stamina of only one minute where the entire class could stay focused on our reading without moving around the room, talking to a friend, or looking away from our book. Since then we have built our stamina up to a solid 30 minutes or so a day and even had one afternoon where we read over 40 minutes! We still have days where we get distracted easily or would rather be doing other things than reading our books independently but we understand that this is part of practicing to become a better reader and we are determined to keep working at it! In the meantime, take a look at some of our dedicated readers at work!