Revising, Poetry & Comparing Texts

The big idea

Your child learns that revising changes ideas while editing fixes rules, and practices both on the narrative from Unit 2. In poetry week your child counts lines and stanzas, marks rhyme schemes, taps rhythm and explains images. Then your child compares two fables and two articles on the same topic, and learns the first steps of research: a good question, notes in their own words and categories.

Standards in plain words

• W.3.5 With help, plans, revises and edits to make writing stronger.
• L.3.1 Uses correct grammar: parts of speech, plurals, verb tenses, subject-verb agreement, comparing words, joining words and different kinds of sentences.
• L.3.2 Uses capitals, commas, quotation marks, possessives and correct spelling, and checks spellings in a dictionary.
• RL.3.4 Works out what words and phrases mean in a story or poem and tells literal from nonliteral language.
• RL.3.5 Uses words like chapter, scene and stanza when talking about stories, plays and poems, and explains how each part builds on the one before.
• RL.3.9 Compares the themes, settings and plots of stories by the same author about the same or similar characters.
• RI.3.9 Compares the most important points and key details in two texts on the same topic.
• RI.3.6 Tells the difference between their own point of view and the author's.
• W.3.7 Does short research projects to learn about a topic.
• W.3.8 Gathers information from experience and from print and digital sources, takes short notes and sorts them into categories.
• RF.3.3 Uses phonics and word parts, including prefixes, suffixes and syllables, to read new words.
• SL.3.1 Takes part in discussions: comes prepared, follows the rules, asks questions, builds on others' ideas and explains their own.
• L.3.4 Works out unknown words with sentence clues, prefixes and suffixes, root words, and glossaries or dictionaries.
• W.3.3 Writes real or imagined stories with characters, dialogue, details, time-order words and a clear ending.

Anchor texts

• Original poems in the lessons: 'Morning on Maple Street,' 'The Wind' and 'Fog'
• Robert Louis Stevenson's 'My Shadow' (public domain)
• Aesop's 'The Lion and the Mouse' and 'The Dove and the Ant' (public domain), compared in Week 16
• Original paired articles on bees ('Busy Bees' and 'Flower Helpers') and the frog article 'From Egg to Frog'
• Original story 'Nico's Window Garden' for the Quarter 2 review

Watch across the unit

• Watch for: Only fixing spelling and calling the piece revised.

  Try: Require at least one changed or added idea, marked in a second color, before the editing pencil comes out.

• Watch for: Explaining nonliteral lines in a poem word for word ('The fog ate the street!').

  Try: Ask 'Could this really happen? If not, what is the poet comparing it to?' and act out what the words really mean.

• Watch for: Copying a sentence and changing one word, thinking it is a note in their own words.

  Try: Use Read, Cover, Write: the book is covered before the pencil moves.