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Blended Unit Work Organizer - 3rd Grade Personal Essay
Unit Title: Personal Essay
Course: 3rd Grade
Content: ELA
Time: 3 weeks
Unit Overview:
Concepts:
1. Writers generate ideas for writing personal essays.
2. Writers learn strategies for good personal essay writing.
3. Writers learn strategies for revising their personal essays.
4. Writers learn strategies for editing their personal essays.
5. Writers publish and share their personal essays.
Standards:
Overview of Sessions – Teaching and Learning Points Aligned with the Common Core
Concept: Writers generate ideas for writing personal essays.
W.3.1, W.3.1a, W.3.1b
Session 1: Writers learn that evidence in the form of mini-stories is used to support big ideas in personal essays.
W.3.1, W.3.1a, W.3.1b
Session 2: Writers learn ways to support big ideas from personal essays using mini-stories.
W.3.1, W.3.1a
Session 3: Writers generate support for big ideas in the form of mini-stories and choose a big idea to develop into a personal essay.
W.3.1, W.3.1a, W.3.1b
Session 4: Writers learn how to write opinion statements for their own personal essays.
W.3.1a
Concept: Writers learn strategies for good personal essay writing.
W.3.1, W.3.1a, W.3.1b, W.3.1c, W.3.1d
Session 5: Writers learn how to organize their ideas in a personal essay using boxes and bullets.
W.3.1a
Session 6: Writers learn how to use their opinion statements to create essay introductions.
W.3.1a
Session 7 and 8: Writers learn how to include angled mini-stories as support for their point of view.
W.3.1a, W.3.1b
Session 9: Writers learn how to create essay conclusions that link back to their point of view.
W.3.1c, W.3.1d
Blended Unit Work Organizer - 3rd Grade Personal Essay
Concept: Writers learn strategies for revising their personal essays.
W.3.5
Session 10: Writers learn how to revise their personal essays for meaning and clarity.
W.3.5
Session 11: Writers learn how to use revision/editing checklists to edit their writing.
W.3.5
Concept: Writers publish and share their personal essays.
W.3.4
Session 12 and 13: A writing community celebrates.
W.3.4
RIT-1: Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.
L-1: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
L-2: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
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Blended Unit Work Organizer - 3rd Grade Personal Essay
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How is communicating my personal experience valuable in supporting evidence?
What are you left wondering about? (Metacognition)
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Is the organization and information of my writing support my big idea?
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Does my personal story support my topic sentence?
Does my paragraph make sense to myself and my readers?
What do good writers do?
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How can I find the words and details to make my writing more powerful?
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Essential Questions
Big Ideas
Communicating my personal experience is valuable to support my thesis statement in my personal essay.
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Communicating my personal experience is valuable as supporting evidence and connecting for my opinions on a topic.
Understanding(s)
Content/Skills
Cognitive
Growth
Targets
Using Mentor Texts
Find similarities, Deconstruct
Retrieving:
recognize, identify,
define, describe,
match
Comprehending:
summarize,
compare, explain,
infer, associate,
discuss, group,
Analyzing:
examine, classify,
breakdown
Analyze:
breakdown,
outline, organize
Create: develop,
compose, plan,
design, develop,
generate
Reasoning: defend,
plan, prove
Metacognition:
planning, thinking,
wonder, reflect,
goals
Self Actualization:
introspect,
community,
perspective,
beliefs, empathy,
acceptance
Metacognition:
reflect, planning,
intentional choices
Reasoning: judge,
justify, evaluate,
critique, check,
defend, prove
3.1a
Intro topic, state opinion, create
organizational structure that lists
reasons.
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Evidence support big ideas
Understand fact vs. opinion
(determine)
4 paragraph and organizer
structure
3.1b
Provide reasons that support the
opinion
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Evidence support big ideas
Write opinion statement
21st Century
Skills
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Blended Unit Work Organizer - 3rd Grade Personal Essay
3.1c
Use linking words and phrases to
connect opinion and reasons
Essential Questions
Big Ideas
(therefore, because, since…)
- Understanding what linking
words are.
I understand that in
order to conclude my
personal essay
effectively, a
concluding statement
must restate the thesis
based on the evidence
I provide within the
essay.
3.1d
Provide a Concluding Statement
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3.5
Planning, Revising, Editing
Essential
Questions
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Big Ideas
Restate the thesis
Understand how to reword the
topic sentence
Check spelling, punctuation,
sentence structure
L.1
Conventions
- Grammar, Caps, Punctuation,
Spelling
Comprehend:
apply, illustrate,
associate, order
Analyze:
relationships,
selecting
Reasoning: check,
defend, justify,
combine, prove
Create: construct,
compose, develop,
propose, plan,
produce
Analyze: examine,
breakdown,
classify
Reasoning:
critique, check,
defend, interpret
Comprehension:
Associate, Explain,
Apply
Analyze: Examine,
Classify, Organize,
Select
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Blended Unit Work Organizer - 3rd Grade Personal Essay
RIT-1
Demonstrate Understanding
CGTarget: term
CGTarget: term
- Ask and Answer Questions
Refer to text - support
3.4
Community Celebrates
CGTarget: term
CGTarget: term
- 21c skills
Presentation
CGTarget: term
CGTarget: term
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Blended Unit Work Organizer - 3rd Grade Personal Essay
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Blended Unit Work Organizer - 3rd Grade Personal Essay
Evidence: Final Personal Essay
Formative
Summative
Process: Thesis
Final Written Personal
Statement, Outline,
Essay
Organizers, 2 sample
narratives, Concluding
Statement
Final Presentation:
(options) ibooks, Book
creator, video, play,
imovie, Aurasma, QR
code,
Performance Task(s):
Setting:
FINAL Digital Personal Essay
Classroom, Digital
World,
Role:
Audience:
Author
3rd Grade Peers &
world
Deliverable:
Prompt (ex. Is it better to have one friend or multiple friends)
Deliverable:
Final Essay Rubric, Criteria, Expectations
Deliverable:
Share Mentor Texts, Samples, Exemplars
Blended Unit Work Organizer - 3rd Grade Personal Essay
Digital Lessons:
(Content & CGT)
Mentor Text share & blog discussion
Guided highlight and/or individual
highlight
Face to Face Lessons:
(21st C Skills & CGT)
Personal Narrative story Peer Share.
Evaluate connection to Thesis/Prompt
Guided Highlight sample text
Apple TV/Elmo share (kids share
examples)
Thesis statement and Concluding
Supporting Details, Quality of Details
Statement submission and approval on
Edmodo, blog…
Flipped Lessons – What is a Thesis
statement, concluding statement…
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Blended Unit Work Organizer - 3rd Grade Personal Essay
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