Ms. Vynorius' Newsletter
Find out what is going on in 3rd grade!
Weekly Homework
Students should be writing in their homework in their planners each day!
UPCOMING EVENTS: (Tentative)
School & Classroom Events :
- April 4th-Reading Interim Test
- April 7th- Narrative Nonfiction Unit Test
- April 10th- Test Genre Unit Starts
- April 12th- Social Studies Lesson 12 & 13 Test
- April 14th- No School
- April 21st- Persuasive Speech Due
- April 26th- Progress Reports Go home
- May 8th- Third Grade Math STAAR
- May 9th- Third Grade Reading STAAR
- May 11th- Field Trip to Perot Museum
- May 19th- Field Day
- May 26th- Bad Weather day (No School)
- May 29th- No School
- May 31st-End of the year party (Early Dismissal)
- June 1st- Report Cards go home (Early Dismissal)
- June 2nd- Last day of School!
Students write their thinking as they read passages.
Students justify their answers explaining WHY they did/did not choose each answer.
What are we learning?
Narrative Nonfiction
In this unit, students read and analyze narrative nonfiction texts. Narrative nonfiction consists of nonfiction texts that are actually stories, including biography, autobiography, feature articles that read like a story, and stories about non-human creatures.
The unit will start by channeling students specifically to biography, but within a few days students learn to read narrative nonfiction in the same way they read fiction stories. They’ll analyze characters, motivations, struggles, and plot. Since the nonfiction students are reading will be structured as stories, we'll bring back the following strands in the Narrative Reading Progression: Retelling/Summary/Synthesis, Inferring about Characters and Other Story Elements, Character Response/Change, as well as the strands from Literal Comprehension section.
It is critical that students keep up their reading volume in this unit and continue to use their reading logs to chart titles of books, page numbers, and amount of time they’ve read. They should have a selection of narrative nonfiction books and articles in their browsing boxes. Students can read narrative nonfiction at school and continue to read fiction at home.
Students will be able to...
- preview a text and predict what they’ll learn.
- determine the main idea and supporting details in nonfiction.
- learn information from text features
- grow ideas about what they’re learning.
- determine author’s purpose
- make inferences in text
- ask and answer questions of a text
Persuasive Writing
This unit has a few major goals. The first is to help writers live more wide-awake lives, taking in all that is happening around them-injustices, small kindnesses, and so on- and writing about these in ways that move others to action and new thinking. The second major goal is to help writers become increasingly more adept at opinion writing in ways that provide the beginning steps for more formal essay writing. In a sense then, this unit is a “baby essay unit.”
Bend 1: Launching Work on Persuasive Speeches- Students first work together on a shared topic that allows then to receive a lot of help writing structured texts that contain a claim, reasons, and examples. They will write this speech, revise it, and deliver it to the school principal.
Bend 2: Students will work for an extended amount of time on one piece, taking it through the writing process. To develop persuasive speeches, writers will gather facts and details and work to organize these.
Bend 3: Students will transfer and apply everything they have learned about writing persuasive speeches to writing other types of opinion pieces- petitions, editorials, persuasive letters, and so on.
Students should be able to...
- Gather brave, bold opinions for persuasive writing
- Write strong, bold thesis statements
- Consider audience to say more
- Organize pieces by paragraphing
- Use tools to spell well
- Gather evidence to match opinion and reasons
- Transfer and apply all they know about opinion writing
- Revise introductions an conclusions to get audience to care
Students should reflect on what level of work they are showing by using the Narrative Learning Progression.
Ms. Vynorius
I love to travel and learn about cultures from all over the world. Since I am from a military family, I have traveled to several countries throughout Europe and Asia. I went to school in South Korea and graduated from a K-12 school of only 300 people! Most of my family still lives in Korea now. I went to the University of Texas at Arlington for my Undergraduate degree and I received my Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Instruction. I have previously taught pre-K, 4th grade, and 3rd grade. I LOVE teaching third grade!
Birthday: October 17th
Hobbies: traveling, painting, drawing, volleyball soccer, cooking
Favorite subject: Writing
Pets: I have a dog (Lyla), Cat (sway), and a turtle (Frankie)
Favorite snacks: gummy worms, chocolate, baked goods and starbucks!
Email: vynoriusa@cfbisd.edu
Location: Las Colinas Elementary School, Kinwest Parkway, Irving, TX, United States