Narrative Stories

Over the past few weeks, our writing focus has been on narrative writing. Students read a variety of stories and learned the features of narratives. Their assignment was to come up with their own adventure stories. They planned their ideas, developed their topic and came up with drafts of their work. They followed a checklist and had to ensure that their adventure stories had key must haves such as: problem and solution, characters, setting, details, describing words, linking words and character dialog with quotation marks. Students self assessed their work and had to follow the feedback from the teacher and their peers. We revised and edited to help our friends produce their best work.

Please head over to our class KidBlog account and leave us some comments or feedback on what you think of their hard work. They are very eager to share their amazing stories globally and can't wait to see comments on their hard work.

https://kidblog.org/class/MrsCiampa/posts

Kidblog Available for Student Blogging

We are excited and eager to begin our student blogging journey! For the past week students have been setting up their Kidblog accounts and using the platform to blog about their interests, experiences and participate in discussions. Now that all students have had the chance to create their accounts and navigate the site, we invite them to use the Blog for their creative writing endeavors. Remember to follow the Blogging Etiquette guidelines found HERE. A blogging contract was sent home with your child today. Please read, sign and send back the bottom of the form to ensure that all students and families understand our blogging rules and guidelines. Our goal is to promote thoughtful discussions and provide a platform for students to safely write for pleasure and for a global audience. Digital citizenship is important to us and students understand the 5 P's for a positive digital footprint.
Remember: the purpose for blogging is to read, write and respond. We encourage students to respond positively and appropriately. We are also promoting thoughtful discussions and dialogue.

Happy Blogging! 

kidblog.org/class/MrsCiampa/posts

Whoever You Are Shared Writing

This week we participated in week 3 of the Global Read Aloud Project. We read the story Whoever You Are by Mem Fox and talked about the text-to-text and text-to-world connections. We collaborated with a partner and shared our connections and our thinking on a shared writing activity using Google Slides. Students are becoming very familiar with how to use a Slidedeck to collaborate with their peers and help them navigate the site to post our learning. Have a look below at our finished product. Additionally, students can read and share their ideas on a shared-padlet created by a teacher from the Caymen Islands. This week, the book had us think about the great things in our community and in the city we live. A few students had the chance to post their ideas to the shared padlet. Students may continue to add for homework this weekend!

Bump it Up!

As a class we have been working on giving effective feedback in the comments we write on the Blogs. I took sample comments from their KidBlogs and together we created a Bump It Up Wall. The bump it up comments will serve as a guide for students to work towards adding more detail in their comments and giving students something to reply back to. This will help to encourage deeper conversations on our Blogs! We have been working on bumping up our writing in a variety of ways in class and on our Blogs. Students are reading each other's written reading responses and offering comments to help improve on their writing. 
Last week we began an exciting global writing challenge called The Five Sentence Challenge. Each week there is a writing prompt and students from around the world are welcome to create a story in 5 sentences. The focus this week was "Going shopping on a rainy day".

The exciting part of this writing challenge is that all students around the world who are participating in this project can read and comment on OUR stories!  
This week we commented on a set of Blogs written by students in a Grade 2 class that live close to us in Kanata. We collaborated with them before during the Global Read Aloud Project in the fall. Students put into practice the bump up style comments that we worked on. They also came up with their own set of Commenting Rules. They decided on what rules our comments should follow and followed them when commenting on the Five Sentence challenge stories they wrote as well as the comments on Mrs. Mason's Grade 2 blogs. Ask your child how they can bump up their comments on our class Kidblog. Also, please feel free to have your child comment on blogs for homework at any time. This will help to encourage meaningful conversations and feedback which will improve our writing. 

Writing Fun at the Writing Center

This week we've had a lot of fun with our new Elf friend Tallulah. Tallulah made her return to our Grade 3 class this week. Each day she's written us letters, moved from place to place in our room and inspired us in our writing. One day she asked us to think of words that describe her. We used this list to write a descriptive paragraph about her. Ask your child about it.

Today she wrote us a letter with a special message about our Writing Center. The Writing Center has been quiet over the past few weeks. She gave us some great writing ideas and reminded us that we could write a letter to Santa. Some students were very eager to write a wish list for Santa. We put our letters into envelopes and addressed them to the North Pole.

One student wondered how to seal an envelope. We taught her that we need to lick it to seal it shut. She was amazed and excited because she'd never done this before. She wondered how Santa would receive her letter so we told her we need to put it in a mailbox to send to the North Pole. She'd never heard of a mailbox either! We spent some time this morning googling mailboxes to show her what happens to mail when it gets sent out. It was a fun morning of learning.

We created a new I-Can checklist for our Writing Center. Students were happy about the writing gifts we got from Tallulah. So many were excited to use our KidBlog accounts to Blog about Tallulah this week. We are practising our writing goals on the Blog. We are aiming to write at least 5 sentences and adding adjectives to our sentences to make them more detailed. Soon, student logins and Blogger Etiquette forms will be sent home so students can regularly access and Blog from home. In the mean time, please have peak at what your child has been doing with their Blogs this week: https://kidblog.org/class/MrsCiampa/posts

GRA Week 4: Exclamation Mark

During Week 4 of the Global Read Aloud project we read the story Exclamation Mark. All week we've had a lot of fun with the story. One aspect of the story that the students enjoyed was seeing the different facial expressions of the exclamation mark. We had many discussions on how we could describe how it was feeling or the way it looked. We then talked about how we could describe ourselves using innovative adjectives.

Students brainstormed a big list of words that described themselves. We started with a small bank of words and soon it quickly grew to include many awesome describing words. Have a look below at the words we came up with. We used the Tagul website to showcase the adjectives that describe us.

Our First Week

We celebrated our first week together with many games and getting to know you activities. There are a few new faces in our room, so the students got to know one another in fun ways. We began our journal writing this week by reading morning messages. Students read letter style messages from me to get used to the letter writing format. In their journals today, students brainstormed and wrote about their favourite parts of Grade 3 so far. We shared many ideas as a class and tried to write 3 sentences in our journal today.

A few friends shared their journal on the iPad app AudioBoom. Have a listen below to some of our favourite memories from our first week in Grade 3 together. Thank you to those of you who have read and signed the Blog permission form so promptly!

Homework April 13-17 - Five Sentence Challenge!

This week for homework students can focus on writing a narrative story just like we are working on in class! There is a brand new 5 Sentence Challenge prompt on the FIVESC website. The current writing prompt is .....climbing a mountain.....

For homework:
1) Stuednts can write a 5 paragraph story using the writing prompt  .....climbing a mountain.....

2) Post your 5 paragraph narrative story on your KidBlog account

3) Comment on your friend's blog!

4) If you'd like to comment on students who are writing their own stories from around the world...follow this link!! http://fivesc.net/2015/04/09/prompt-13-2/ Click on any of the links to view and comment on their stories!!

Happy Writing.

Narrative Writing

Our newest writing focus has turned to Narrative Writing. We were going to focus on Persuasive writing but we had to change things. During our Literacy Centers, a very popular activity the students enjoy is writing their own books. As a result, we decided to focus on writing our own narrative stories.

A few weeks ago, we got the chance to work with Mme. Erskine's grade 4 class. We shared our writing and created a Padlet to teach one another about our writing. Our class taught the grade 4's about Procedural Writing and they taught us about Narrative writing. To recall what narrative's must have, we read a narrative story and then looked at our shared Padlet again. The Padlet helped us to make our own checklist. Have a look at our checklist and our Padlet from before. We are lucky to have had that sharing session. It gave us a good opportunity to learn about how to write narratives before writing them ourselves.

Created with Padlet

The neat thing about focusing on narrative writing is that students are so excited to write their own stories. They are referencing our must have list to add important narrative details such as quotation marks, describing words and more! Next week students will be using their brainstorm ideas to help them write a rough draft of a story. We will then make a good copy to publish our stories. Students will be able to choose how they make their good copies (on an app, on KidBlog, etc).

Check out our KidBlog accounts. Students are writing their very own narrative stories. It is very exciting to see that students are remembering how to write a narrative and including the Must-Have's. Please add comments to our narrative stories by following the links below!

http://kidblog.org/MrsCiampa/ed3a68a5-b5d4-4f65-b47c-e40e6a70cbe0/princess-sophia/

http://kidblog.org/MrsCiampa/432a55d9-206f-4448-88d1-688431e33b0d/1293/

WN: Today we are thinking about ideas for our narrative writing like a shy mermaid gets bullied by merman BECAUSE she's shy.
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) April 9, 2015

WN and NAN says this is what narrative story's must have. pic.twitter.com/2rwbzzHAmr
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) April 9, 2015

5SC This Week: In the Jungle

This week our class participated in another 5 Sentence Challenge. Our prompt this this was 3 words: In the Jungle...Students had to write 5 sentences using only this writing prompt. https://fivesc.net/2015/03/05/prompt-6-3-2/#gf_23

As a class we began with a brainstorm session. We explored what jungles look...feel...and sound like. We used a shared Google Doc to come up with some details before beginning our writing. Have a look at what our shared brainstorm looked like:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YEyl2gi80_dRe-Yg-5eLB_HHN-VSvZ2uac2ZEP9jeFo/edit?usp=sharing  This activity helped us to write our rough drafts. It gave us the opportunity to work with a partner and come up with ideas together.

Please follow the link to our class KidBlogs to view what we all wrote about! Since this is a Global Writing Project, we have already received comments from student bloggers from all over the world! This week the students took some time to read and respond to some of the comments we've received on our Blogs. We've also commented on blogs from students around the world who wrote about the jungle. It is pretty amazing to see the reach this amazing project has. We are communicating with students in Australia, Thailand, the USA and more!

Students are encouraged to post and comment on our KidBlogs over the March Break! They are also welcome to continue commenting on other jungle blogs from around the world: https://fivesc.net/2015/03/05/prompt-6-3-2/#gf_23

HAVE A WONDERFUL MARCH BREAK!

5 Sentence Challenge!

Students working on peer editing their rough draft of the 5SC!

This week we began a new global project venture. This time it is a Blogging Project known as the "5 Sentence Challenge." This is a global project that challenges student writers to blog about a particular topic using a sentence or picture prompt. This project is available to student bloggers all over the world. We are exciting to begin taking part in it!

This week the prompt focused on a beautiful picture. We brainstormed as a class what we could write about and focused on the details inside of the picture. Students had great ideas to share. We started with a rough draft. Our goal was to be creative, write at least 5 sentences and use our writing checklists to help keep us on track.
Students worked in partners to edit one another's work. They used the editing checklist as their guide. Once rough copies were complete, students wrote their good copies on their KidBlogs!

As a class we have been working on giving effective feedback in the comments we write on the Blogs. I took sample comments from their KidBlogs and together we created a Bump It Up Wall. The bump it up comments will serve as a guide for students to work towards adding more detail in their comments and giving students something to reply back to. This will help to encourage deeper conversations on our Blogs!

The exciting part of this 5 Sentence Challenge is that all students around the world who are participating in this project can read and comment on OUR stories! They are posted and ready for any student to comment on. Students in our class are encouraged to view what other students blogged about the picture. All students and schools participating can be found by following this link: https://fivesc.net/2015/02/05/prompt-8-3-2-2/#gf_22 Students can click on any student's Blog link and comment away!! Remember to bump up your comment with extra details and a question!

To view all stories that our class posted, please view our class blogs and check out our Blog Roll: http://kidblog.org/MrsCiampa/

New this week...Mr. Thomas is now blogging too!!

Shared-Learning with the Grade 4 Class

Today students had the opportunity to participate in a shared-learning activity together with the Grade 4 class.

Our classes worked together this morning to teach one another about their respective writing projects. The Grade 4's completed personal Narrative stories while we recently completed Procedural expert posters. The goal was to have our students work together to read, to teach one another about their respective writing projects and to inform them what the writing pieces must have. After reading students were asked to post a reflection on Padlet on what they learned and what the writing pieces must have.

Our 2 classes had a wonderful time sharing together. We had fun sharing our own writing and expertise with the Grade 4's. They were curious about how we created the posters and how to scan the QR Codes to get on to the Padlet. We even taught Mme. Erskine how to scan the QR Code to get on to Padlet!

 Reading with the Grade 4's taught us about how to write Narratives. When we begin our next writing unit, students will have a better idea what Narratives must have! To demonstrate our learning, we posted our learnings on a shared-Padlet. We will re-visit this Padlet again when we officially begin our unit on Narratives. We also hope to work with the Grade 4's again! They shared a lot of great ideas with us and we hope to have the chance to learn and work with them again soon. Huge thank you to Mme. Erskine and Mrs. Maher!

Created with Padlet

wn says: today i am teaching a grade 4 how to do procedure writing and how to tweet!
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) February 3, 2015

jn says: wn tought me about procedure writing.
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) February 3, 2015

DL says. We are telling our partners what procedural writing and narrative story are.
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) February 3, 2015

Rc today I leand that naterad must have a biggin,mittle and end
— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) February 3, 2015

Expert Posters

This week students completed their expert posters! All students decided to complete their good copy on the Pic Collage app. We followed the procedural writing model to write about what we think we are experts on. Below students came up with what they know very well, and used our procedural checklist to write about what they want to teach people about. We have posted these posters around our school and hope that we can teach others about our expertise!

Students also recorded their reading on the app AudioBoom. We are assessing our own reading and working on our voice. Students can listen to one another's reading and see if they used good expression and a clear voice when reading. Enjoy!

          

    

 

 

Below are our AudioBoom readings. We are working on our clarity and expression - we hope you learned something from us today!

listen to ‘NN Procedural Writing’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘JP Procedural Writing’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘FMF Procedural Writing’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘ZK Procedural Writing’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘FF Procedural Writing’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘DL Procedural Writing’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘CW Procedural Writing’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘RC Procedural Writing’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘HH Procedural Writing’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘EB procedural writing’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘TO procedural writing’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘BT procedural writing’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘KI procedural writing’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘SM procedural writing’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘AO procedural writing’ on audioBoom