Figurative Language & the Research Report

The big idea

Your child compares two texts on the same topic and combines them into one summary and conclusion. In figurative language week, your child learns to tell literal words from nonliteral ones and to explain what common sayings really mean. After the Quarter 3 review, your child starts a four-week research report: choosing a topic, writing questions, finding trustworthy sources, taking notes and drafting.

Standards in plain words

• RI.3.9 Compares the most important points and key details in two texts on the same topic.
• RI.3.3 Explains how events, science ideas or steps connect, using words for time, order and cause and effect.
• RI.3.4 Works out the meaning of school words and subject words in a nonfiction text.
• RL.3.4 Works out what words and phrases mean in a story or poem and tells literal from nonliteral language.
• L.3.5 Tells literal from nonliteral meanings, connects words to real life, and notices shades of meaning (knew, believed, wondered).
• L.3.4 Works out unknown words with sentence clues, prefixes and suffixes, root words, and glossaries or dictionaries.
• W.3.2 Writes informative pieces that introduce a topic, group facts and definitions, use linking words and end with a conclusion.
• 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.3.6 Learns and uses grade-level words, including words that show time and place.

Anchor texts

• Original paired texts: 'Bees on the Farm' and 'Inside the Hive' (Week 25) and 'Frogs Grow Up' and 'Frogs in Danger' (Week 27)
• Original poem 'Storm at Night' and Christina Rossetti's 'Who Has Seen the Wind?' (public domain)
• Robert Louis Stevenson's 'My Shadow' (public domain) for literal and nonliteral lines
• The original article 'How Honeybees Make Honey' as the model for notes and the report
• Your child's own research sources

Watch across the unit

• Watch for: Using evidence from only one of two texts, or calling texts different when one just leaves something out.

  Try: Mark a 1 or 2 by each fact and check both numbers appear; remind your child that 'missing is not the same as different.'

• Watch for: Reading a nonliteral phrase literally, or calling every describing word nonliteral.

  Try: Ask 'Could this really happen just the way the words say?' If yes, it is literal; if not, ask what the writer really means.

• Watch for: Choosing a topic as big as a library shelf, or copying long sentences as notes.

  Try: Shrink the topic with a How or Why question, and cover the source and write only the words your child says aloud.