I had the opportunity to spend my day with our 3rd & 4th grade teaching team this Tuesday during their Lesson Study session. I have talked about Lesson Study before where our lead professional developer in reading and writing instruction works with our staff as they develop lessons. Our 3rd & 4th graders were working on opinion writing - writing an essay to persuade the reader. If you ask your 3rd or 4th grader at home, you will learn that they have a lot of worthy opinions ranging from why they should be allowed to sleep later, why our school should have walls, to why we should have a school swimming pool that would double as a community pool. These students went way beyond “begging” for these improvements. They wrote essays with topic sentence that hooked the reader. They connected examples to their ideas. They also were sure to present a solution to the problem they had brought up.
I appreciate the hard work of Mrs. Bloch, Mrs. Ehtesham and Ms. Lavallee as they continually work to improve instruction. All of the students wrote very convincing essays, a skill that will serve them well in all subjects and in life itself!
