Weekend Adventures FCAs

Although there is no school tomorrow, the children do have their typical Monday homework tonight. They should write a paragraph describing one thing they did this weekend.

I thought it might be helpful if I was more specific with all of you about their FCAs (focus correction areas):

1. Small moment - The children should write about a small moment in time. It could 10 minutes, or even 3 minutes of their day. They should not write about their entire day, or even an hour. For example, jumping in the leaves is a small moment. Fall clean up day is not. We call the big topic (not a small moment) a "watermelon."

2. Hook/topic sentence - The children have been learning that the beginning of their writing should "hook" the reader so that they want to read more. However, their paragraph should also include a topic sentence towards the beginning of their paragraphs. (A topic sentence needs to be within the first few sentences, but doesn't necessarily have to be first.)

For example, if I'm writing a paragraph about jumping in the leaves, my topic sentence might be: 'I was having fun with my girls jumping in the leaves.' However, the first sentence of my paragraph could be a hook like, 'The leaves flew in the air and floated down all over my body.' The hook makes the reader want to read more. The topic sentence makes it clear to the reader what the paragraph is about.

In the actual paragraph it would read, 'The leaves flew in the air and floated down all over my body. I was having fun with my girls jumping in the leaves.'

3. PN (Proper Nouns) - The children have learned that the first letter of every proper noun should be capitalized. Therefore I will be looking for capital letters at the beginnings of names, months, days, streets, etc...


I hope this clarifies things for you. I don't expect you to correct your third grader's paragraph, or help them make it "perfect." However, I thought knowing the FCAs might assist you in supporting your child if he/she needs it.

Please don't hesitate to contact me with any comments or concerns.