Following instruction

Nearly all 24 students cringed when the chalk Charlotte Welker swiped across the board squeaked, but that temporary annoyance wasn't enough to distract them from their task.

The students in the third-grade class at St. Vincent de Paul parish school in Cape Girardeau quickly went back to practicing their handwriting.

With a few strokes, Welker wrote a cursive G on the board and instructed the children to write the letter three times on their lined paper. A few glanced from their paper to the chalkboard or to the cursive alphabet letters taped above the board to see if they'd done it correctly.

Students choose the best of the three letters they've written and mark it with a star. Then they moved on to the letter H, both capital and lowercase.

"I want some windblown letters," Welker said. She's instructed the children to write with a slant and connect the letters like they would when writing a word.

All about skills

Good handwriting can make good students, Welker says, and the lessons taught in third grade are about skills -- like independence and organization -- needed to become good students.

In third grade, students learn how to multiply, divide, make graphs, create plurals of words and show possession, make inferences or predictions in stories and learn rules for reading thermometers or understanding the water cycle. It's also the year they develop personalities and a sense of humor, which makes teaching fun, Welker said.

The curriculum at the parish school is set by the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Roman Catholic Diocese. The teachers select textbooks from a list approved by the diocese. In public schools, the curriculum guidelines are set by the state's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which uses a Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) test to rate skill levels.

Welker's class begins its day with prayer and recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and then sings the national anthem. A review of religion lessons is the next task, and the students can easily recite the five sorrowful mysteries of the rosary. They move on to the joyful mysteries and begin to color the beads on the crucifix.

During the religion lesson, the students also learned about commas and complex sentences while reading from a textbook. After a few minutes of quiet work, the students put their notebooks and crayons away and prepare for their next assignment: a timed test. The test is a quick review of math and Welker gives them three minutes to finish.

Mary Dohogne wiggles her legs as she sits in the chair and tries to finish the problems. Other students hold their pencils tightly as they press against the page writing answers. No one finishes before Welker tells them to stop writing.

Math seemed to be the most challenging for the students, who are just beginning a study of place value. They understand some of the concepts but changing hundreds into thousands poses a challenge.

Math is much harder in third grade than in second, said Morgan Twidwell. "Third grade is hard."

Welker passes back a worksheet the students completed two days before. "Your grade is at the bottom and that is nobody's business but yours," she tells them. There weren't any papers with 100 percent. "This is pretty heavy stuff you're learning."

The students complete a few problems together, remembering how to spell out the numbers or write problems in expanded form. "Does it make sense now?" Welker asks.

After math is a lesson in language and the students are beginning to study plurals and possessive nouns. One row of students heads to the board to write several spelling words as plurals. Then Welker reviews their work.

Lessons building on lessons

Back at his seat, Daniel Neff spots his own error. When Welker reaches his word, butterflies, he explains what's wrong. "You have to erase the y and end in ies," he explains.

"You have to put your thinking caps on and see what you're doing," Welker tells them before moving on to possessive nouns.

The class seems to catch on quickly and comes up with their own examples. And they have some good questions: How do you write a possessive when the word ends in s or sh?

Singular possessive means that a noun owns something, Welker reminds them, not that it is plural. Josh Norman then realizes that his name wouldn't need the -es ending, just an apostrophe s to show possession.

The lessons have to build on one another little by little, Welker said. They need time to get familiar with the new tasks.

Students spent most of the day Thursday reviewing their earlier work as preparation for tests Friday. And while it looked like they were taking home tons of work, they have been reviewing all week, Welker said. "They already know this stuff. We're teaching them good study habits."

ljohnston@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126