Last week in third grade we spent a lot of time reading and writing about Martin Luther King Jr. We read a great book: Martin's Big Words and watched a Brainpop Jr. video on the topic. We wrote about our dream and did a craftivity to go with it. I've been walking by these guys for about a week now and I still can't get over how cute they are!
One of my favorite activities from last week was our guided reading groups. We used a set of books I ordered from Scholastic to read about MLK and answer text dependent questions. We are focusing on using evidence-based terms to answer questions from our reading. There is a great free set of posters on TPT for this.
Sometimes digging into a text with students can seem monotonous, but with an interesting topic, cute graphic organizers, and a specific purpose we can really do some close reading. Soon we will need to transition these discussions into our writing. Students will need to be able to read a text, respond to it in writing, and provide evidence supporting their perspective. As third graders! It is asking a lot of them, but it is amazing when it all clicks.
