NavarreteElementary School

Ms. Traylor’s “Take” on

We all have strengths and weaknesses as learners.  I believe in teaching students to honestly reflect upon these as a way to better understand their own cognitive processing. I believe my job is to help students develop an understanding of how they learn and then encourage and motivate each of them to work up to their BEST potential by setting and working toward realistic goals.

READING

I believe the best way for a student to grow as a reader is to read books at his/her level.  To do this I utilize The Daily 5 reading program established by two sister teachers.  This program calls for students to receive the following components of reading every day:  Read to Self  time, Read to Someone time, Listen to Reading time, Word Work time, and Writing.  Within this framework I incorporate the district's reading textbook OR our science & social studies units. The Daily 5 program also contains a deeper element known as the C.A.F.E..  This is a fun acronym for Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanding Vocabulary.  Each of these areas is filled with different reading strategies to help extract meaning from whatever text is being read.  

During the 5 various times of The Daily 5  I will be meeting with reading groups which are designed to teach reading skills pertinent to children’s different areas of need. 

AR or Accelerated Reading is a component to reading that we use here at Navarrete.  In 3^rd grade we as teachers ask that each student read one book per week at his/her level, then take and pass the quiz for this book. Time is given each day for the students to read this book (Read to Self), and the expectation is that they are reading AR Books at home for the nightly homework reading requirement.  

WRITING

 With the implementation of the College & Career Readiness Standards we are seeing the importance of students using writing as a way to express their understanding of what they are reading.  So, much of the writing your child will be doing in my class will be in response to what they are reading.  The students will be asked to JUSTIFY their answers by citing specific page numbers and even quoting the books they are reading.   For example, if your child is asked to explain how the illustrations helped him/her to understand the story better, he/she will be expected to cite an example like, “The picture on page 319 showing the children up in the tree trying to trick the wolf really helped me to understand the trap they made. Etc”

Navarrete implements the Write from the Beginning program. This program builds from K-6th grade.  In 3rd grade, we teach students how to use a Flee Map to plan for their 3-paragraph essays.  The Flee Maps are tailored toward our three major types of essays:  narrative, opinion, and informative.  Within the opinion and informative essays, the AZ state standards require students to justify their ideas using text evidence, or a quote, from articles they have read that pertain to the topic.  

SPELLING