3rd Grade - Gateway 2

The materials for grade 3 partially meet the expectations of indicator 2d. Materials provide some supports for students to demonstrate their knowledge of topics through integrated skills (e.g., a combination of reading, writing, speaking, and listening) after they have followed text-dependent questions and tasks. To fully support students’ work with culminating tasks over the course of the school year, the teacher will have to identify and /or create other resources. The materials do provide some examples and guidance as to external resources for this purpose. Some examples of how the program supports students in demonstrating knowledge via integrated skills include (but are not limited to) the following:

• In A Drop Around the World Day 3, students integrate information from technical illustrations to compare and contrast.
• On Day 3 of Maps and Globes, students compare old and new maps and move to discussion of the topic of negative elevation, points on land that are below sea level (e.g., Death Valley, the Dead Sea). Students work in pairs to complete this brief culminating task.

In Lon Po Po Day 2, students to compare what they learn from listening with what they know about the traditional tale of Red Riding Hood.

The instructional materials for Grade 3 partially meet expectations that materials support students’ increasing writing skills over the course of the school year, building students’ writing ability to demonstrate proficiency at grade level at the end of the school year. There is consistent time for writing instruction over the course of the year. During the differentiation block, students have as many as 30 minutes each day to complete text-based writing tasks. In addition, they have 90 45-minute blocks for which no interactive read-alouds are planned, and they will often have 15 minutes of the interactive read-aloud block. There are standards-based rubrics to support teachers’ identification of student writing ability.

The Grade 3 Teacher Manual provides an overview of the writing purpose, but little guidance is given to provide teachers with explicit plans, protocols and models for writing beyond on-demand pieces. In the Grade 3 Teacher’s manual (p. 11), it states: “You will see that there are not as many interactive read aloud lesson plans as there are shared reading lesson plans. This difference is deliberate. Nearly half of the 45-minute time segments for interactives must be reserved for process writing so that students learn to compose, revise, and edit their own writing pieces. We have not designed this portion of the curriculum. Teachers should work together to use consistent process writing procedures and language and to sequence the three writing genres (narrative, informative, and persuasive/argumentative) across the school year.”

In the materials, writing tasks are all on-demand and are text-dependent, which is a strength, however, there is no explicit support for modeling, nor are support materials for a writing process present in materials. For example, on page 54, the Teacher’s Manual states, for written responses, the teacher is to “Model for students at the beginning of the year to establish norms for length and quality." But no models are provided in the instructional materials.

Many writing prompts ask students to use the skill of summarization or to write summaries, however, models of summaries or protocols for how to write a summary are not included. Teachers would need to find or develop their own lessons, models, or protocols of how to write a summary. For example, during the First nine weeks of Shared Reading, Week 7, Constitution of the United States, the following task is included: “Reread page 14. What does the Speaker of the House do? Summarize the Speaker's responsibilities.”

Writing topics chosen are appropriate and engaging for the grade level in which they are presented and varied in type of writing students are asked to do.

Examples of the writing tasks present (which include the protocol of including text evidence) for Grade 3 students include the following:

• In the First Nine Weeks of the Interactive Read-Aloud, Day 15 of The BFG: “I want you write a blurb for this book. A blurb is a paragraph telling a few facts about the book and trying to persuade other people to read it. Think about what it is about this book that is most interesting. Put that in your blurb. I will read you the blurb that is on the back of the book. That will give you an idea.”
• In the Second Nine Weeks of the Interactive Read-Aloud, Day 3 of Sundiata: “On the back of this book are quotes that other people have said about the book. [Read a couple of the shorter ones aloud.] Imagine that the publisher asked you for your opinion of the book. Write two or three sentences of your own that might appear on the back of this book. Later we will display them on the board, so do your best work. Remember to give your opinion first and then your reasons.”
• In the Third Nine Weeks of the Interactive Read-Aloud, Day 3 of Harvesting Hope “Pretend that you are a newspaper reporter. Your boss asks you to write a story about the 100-mile march. But your boss tells you, "We don't have very much space. You have to tell the story in one paragraph." Write that one paragraph for me. You have to include the most important ideas. These are who, what, why, where, when, and how?”
• In the Fourth Nine Weeks of the Interactive Read-Aloud, Day 9 of Here Lies the Librarian: How does the author create a surprise ending for this chapter?

If teachers would like to incorporate the writing process into lessons (in order to meet the standards), they would need to generate their own materials and allocate more time than originally budgeted by the curriculum.

The instructional materials for Grade 3 partially meet expectations that materials include a progression of focused research projects to encourage students to develop knowledge in a given area by confronting and analyzing different aspects of a topic using multiple texts and source materials (W.3.7). Students engage with components of the research process over the course of the year and complete some short projects. The interactive read-alouds, support students’ building skills to combine information from illustrations, graphs, texts, and internet sources. There is some direction and guidance to teachers to allocate time for research projects (Third Grade manual, page 95).

There are minimal opportunities for students to independently complete full research projects that have gone through the process of revision. The component pieces included, however, may support students in getting ready for that kind of work. Teachers will have to identify outside materials for students to complete full research projects.

The standards ask that students engage in “short research projects that build knowledge about a topic.” Most writing prompts in the grade 3 Bookworms can be answered with one paragraph or shorter (all in response to texts), and some are followed over several days by related prompts on the same topic for the duration of the text. Research tasks are meant to be completed in class and increase in rigor over time as related to the increasing complexities of texts.

Some examples from the 3rd grade materials that are representative of the program include the following:

In the 1st nine weeks of the Interactive Reading component, students are read The Constitution of the United States. Each day after reading the text, vocabulary instruction, text structure analysis, and comprehension discussion questions provide students with supports for the writing prompts. Examples of the writing prompts are as follows:

• Pretend you are a delegate at the Convention, and you have just finished your first day’s work. Write a letter home to your family. Tell how you felt and what the meeting was like. Make sure that you use proper letter format and you take the perspective of a delegate.
• You will see the three parts of government that the Constitution created. Why do you think the delegates decided to do this? Make sure that you are considering their perspective
• Reread page 9. You will see the three parts of government that the Constitution created. Why do you think the delegates decided to do this? Make sure that you are considering their perspective.

In the 2nd nine weeks, of the Interactive Read-Aloud, students read Maps and Globes. The instruction leading to a short research project is as follows:

• Students receive an overview of technical vocabulary
• Teacher models examining text structure using a graphic organizer and included talking points
• Teacher asks questions and models comprehension strategies during reading (example: “Let’s compare this old map of the world with the one on our wall [or another one you can find]. Talk to your partner about some of the differences you see.”)
• Students review the first diagram
• Class engages in sentence composing using 2 sentences related to the text
• Written response is assigned: “Tell the reasons why maps were so wrong a few centuries ago.”

In the 3rd nine weeks of the Shared Reading component, students read Susan B. Anthony, first with the generation of research questions to investigate after viewing video clips and then with a compare/contrast assignment to compare her life with that of Frederick Douglass. (Week 8, Days 39 and 40.) Vocabulary instruction, text structure analysis as well as comprehension discussion questions provides students with supports for writing to the following prompt.

• How are the lives of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony similar? How are they different?

The teacher materials instruct teachers to demonstrate for students how to use the Internet to answer questions, but no other guidance or procedures are provided.

In the 4th nine weeks of the Shared Reading component, students read Twisters and Other Terrible Storms. Each day students write to a new prompt allowing for short research opportunities. For example,

• Write a procedure for tornado formation. Use information from pages 59 and 60, but write it in your own words. (Day 4)

• What atmospheric conditions are required for a hurricane? (Day 5)
• How are blizzards formed? (Day 6)

Research projects that extend across texts and use various sources would need to be developed by the teacher. No research guidelines are provided for sorting evidence into provided categories, taking brief notes or gathering information from sources. (W.3.8) Teachers would need to develop organizational tools and research protocols to assist students with research projects across texts to assist in building knowledge of a topic. (W.3.7)

It is also noted that there are few opportunities to research using digital sources (W.3.8), so teachers would need to be supplement this component in order to fully support students’ success with the research standards.