A Peek at My YEAR - Third Grade Literacy

I wanted to share some of the planning I've done for my role as literacy teacher this fall.  If you missed it, I will be working with third, fourth and fifth graders this fall.  I'm going to be push in with classroom teachers in the mornings and teach literacy in the afternoons. I'm hoping to have each class twice a week, but I haven't seen the schedule yet, so I don't know!

My objective is to help students love to read, so to do that, I've done a ton of reading about reading.  Thank goodness for the Internet!  There are so many great reading units and year long curriculum maps to pull from!  A quick side-note: because I'm supplementing a reading curriculum, I didn't try to cover every single CCSS standard.  I'm focused on reading literature, but each grade will spend time reading non-fiction as well.

Here's a look at my year-long plan for third grade.  I'm sure you'll notice that I borrowed heavily from Lucy Calkins Units of Study.

This little map shows some of the mini lessons I'm planning for my readers.  In September, we will share Horrible Harry Moves Up to Third Grade.  I'm expecting most of my readers to be below benchmark, so this book should work well.  I have other Horrible Harry books that we will read after that.

For November and December, we will most likely move onto another book series, probably The Magic Tree House.  I'll keep Horrible Harry books available for my readers to read independently.

In January and February, we will move onto a nonfiction study. I like using book sets - first read a book with basic information, then a more detailed book and then an even more detailed text - to teach readers to become experts.  I will read books about sharks and my readers will choose their own book sets.

For March and April, I plan to teach using book clubs.  The classes should have begun literature circles, so I will build upon those literature circles.  For these clubs, I plan to offer Cam Jansen, Encyclopedia Brown, A to Z Mysteries, etc.

Finally, in May and June, students will read books that include social issues. { I'll wait until after school begins to see what levels we are working with before I choose books} 

Tell me: If you have favorite books in L-O levels, please let me know! I've been in the S and up levels for so long!