Reading is Our Superpower!

Set Up Your Own Reading Nook and Then. . . Get Caught ReadingTop of Page

One way to discover the joy of reading is to set up a special place to read and hang out in at home. By creating a fun, reading nook, you will start to see reading as an even more exciting and creative activity. Therefore, I am asking you to set up a special place for reading somewhere in your home. It can be as simple as creating a space in the corner of your room or decorating a small, empty space in your hallway, playroom, kitchen, or living room. Items that can be added to the reading space are: a big beanbag chair, floor cushions, throw pillows, stuffed animals, a small rug, bins for books or a bookshelf, a lamp, and a container for storing reading and writing tools such as pencils, sticky notes, and a dictionary.

After you design and set up your own special nook, please have a family member take a photo of you reading in that spot. For example, my favorite place to read is the over-sized, Paris themed chair that sits in one corner of my bedroom. It is a quiet place with a lamp overhead where I can stretch out, and Scarlett can curl up next to me while I read. Once a family member has caught you reading in your nook, either print out the picture and bring it to school or e-mail the photo to mbrown@my.rescueusd.org for printing. Your photo will be featured in the front cover of your reading journal. Please complete this assignment by Friday, August 30.

Reading Counts and Reading GoalsTop of Page

Our third grade team consists of teachers who have developed life-long reading habits and are striving to create a classroom community that fosters a love of reading and enables students to not only adopt a reading lifestyle, but also to learn reading skills and strategies. Mrs. Huettenhain, Mr. Wetmore, and I have pledged to dedicate time to guided reading, shared reading, and independent reading throughout our school day because we know that children who read will succeed and excel in all areas of their education.

As part of our classroom reading program, we will utilize Reading Counts through Scholastic as one way to track each student's reading growth and progress in reading. At the beginning of the school year, each student will complete a reading inventory test in the computer lab. Based on their performance on the test, students are given a beginning of the year Lexile score which will help them to choose books in both the school and classroom library that fit them as readers. The Lexile score is an accurate way of matching a student to a text because it takes into account the student's understanding of vocabulary and sentence structure in texts as well as their ability to use context clues to determine the meaning of unknown words. The more your student reads and is exposed to different types of books, the more growth he or she will experience with the program this year.

Every 6-8 weeks, the students will take a new reading inventory test (SRI) to receive an updated Lexile score. The results of their Lexile tests will be sent home via a parent letter for parents to review. The Lexile range for grade 3 is 620-790. This is based on the Common Core Standards.

Your student is required to read a high-interest book which is at his or her Lexile level for 30 minutes each day as the main part of his or her homework. The 30 minute reading homework requirement can be broken into chunks. For example, your student can read in the car, on the bus, while waiting at a sibling's practice, before/after an appointment or at any "free" time. I am committed to helping your student identify these hidden times for reading which are known as "Reading Around the Edge" times.

We have streamlined our homework requirements, so that reading is the focus each afternoon/evening. Of course, the hope is that your student is reading throughout the week and weekend simply because he or she loves reading for pleasure and has learned to select books that fit him or her as a reader. It is important your student is focused on reading only one book at a time and is working on the same book both at school and home. To help facilitate this practice, each night your student will bring home a book bag which contains his or her book and a "Reading is Our Superpower" homework journal.

After your student completes a book, he or she is to take a Reading Counts quiz online. These quizzes can only be taken at school. If a student doesn't pass a quiz with a score of 70% or better on the first try, he or she can retake the quiz two more times. However, there is a waiting period of 24 hours between each test.

At the beginning of the year, each student is asked to commit to a Reading Counts goal of reading 1,000,000 words. To help you understand how doable this is, the third grade team created this fact sheet:

Is it possible to read

1 million words in a year?

words/minute*

100

words/minute*

130

words/minute*

170

words/minute*

A handful of students in 3^rd grade read here.

This is the 3^rd grade benchmark.

Most students in 3^rd grade read here.

A handful of students in 3^rd grade read here.

x 60 minutes

of reading each day

(30 minutes in class & 30 minutes at home)

x 5 days

each week

(Reading on the weekend is extra!)

x 37 weeks

(Reading you did over summer, or reading that takes place during the first week of school, over Thanksgiving, Winter, and Spring Breaks is extra!)

= 832,500

words by the end of the school year.

= 1,110,000

words by the end of the school year.

= 1,443,000

words by the end of the school year.

= 1,887,000

words by the end of the school year.

The answer is, YES!!!

With a little effort and consistent reading,

it IS possible to read 1 million words in a year.

At Back-to-School Night, I will have a handout on which I have calculated your student's ability to meet this goal based on the fluency information I have for your student regarding where they were at as of May 2019. If your child's year-end goal calculation falls below 1 million words, at our conference time in November, we will discuss ways you can support your student to still be able to meet this goal by the end of the year such as reading with or to your student or listening to audio books together.

Throughout the year, the students will be tracking their own progress to ensure they remain on pace for reaching the goal. When goals are at the forefront and a regular part of the classroom culture, students are more likely to succeed and offer each other support and motivation along the way.

To motivate the students to do their personal best, I have implemented a classroom rewards program. My rewards program is based on the theme, "Reading is Our Superpower." During the first week of school, the students will be given their superheroes which will fly to the various skyscrapers which each represent a reading benchmark. They will move their superheroes to different skyscrapers based on how many words they have read for Reading Counts. As the students reach a Reading Counts benchmark, they will be celebrated at our monthly awards assemblies which are usually on the last Friday of every month from 9:20-9:50 in the gym.

25,000 words= Red and black skyscraper

50,000 words= Yellow and black skyscraper

75,000 words= Green and black skyscraper

100,000 words=Blue and black skyscraper

150,000 words=Orange and black skyscraper

200,000 words=Lime green and black skyscraper

250,000 words=Pink and black skyscraper

500,000 words=Dark purple and black skyscraper

750,000 words=Dark orange and black skyscraper

1,000,000 words=Violet and black skyscraper

Last year I had 19 students out of 24 reach their 1 million word goal, and 2 of those students read over 2,000,000 words each. It can be done!

Each week when we visit the library, Mrs. Allen and I will remind students to check out book which are of high-interest to them and at their Lexile level. The expectation is that once your student has finished his or her Reading Counts book at home, he or she will complete a quiz on that book in the classroom or in the computer lab. Students may also check out Lexiled books from my classroom library.

As a community of readers, we will make it a daily and weekly habit during Readers' Workshop of discussing the books we are reading independently, holding book commercials to preview "must reads" to one another, and sharing our written book recommendations. My hope is that by talking about books, the students can keep a "What to read next list," so they have no trouble identifying books to read.

Thank you for supporting your student's reading development by helping your child achieve his or her Reading Counts goals. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me at mbrown@my.rescueusd.org

Happy reading!

Mrs. Brown's Class