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Reading: We began the last unit of the school year this week. The 8 new sight words we learned this week are: /even, surprised, pushed bear, toward, teacher, studied above/. Our target skill this week was compare and contrast. Our target strategy is monitor and clarify. Our phonics lessons this week were working with words that have an -ed or -ing ending. We discussed that words with -ed mean something that has already happened or passed. Ing endings are things that are currently happening. The concept of past and present is not as difficult for them. The part that was confusing was dropping the e and adding ing to make hope into hoping. And doubling the consonant to make hop into hopped. This something that they will assimilate as they move on in their reading. Our spelling words this week are: /mix, mixed, hop, hopped, hope, hoping, use, used, run, running, writing, grabbed./ We learned about figurative language called idioms this week. We discussed how the phrase I loved the movie so much I was glued to my chair, doesn't mean literally. They decided it meant it was so good, they didn't want to move. We practiced deciphering other idoms such as: raining cats and dogs, a piece of cake, ants in your pants, busy as a bee, I"m all ears, and being a couch potato. We continue phonemic awareness work and have been segmenting syllables and substituting vowels to make new words. We play sight word games such as sparkle and I have who has, we play the 5 clues game, we play fill in the blank game as well to help them understand the meaning as well as the spelling of their sight words. Our read aloud this week was The Art Contest. The vocabulary words we review from the story this week are: softly, universe, magical, field, wondrous, shrubbery/. We read the following books this week: The Dot which is a great simple little story that illustrates to children how trying something is better than saying they can't. In this story a girl wouldn't try to draw in art class because she said she couldn't. Her teacher told her to just make a dot and see where it takes her. She slammed a dot onto the paper and gave it to the teacher who asked her to sign it. The next art class she found her dot framed in a gold frame hanging on the teacher's wall. This inspired her to make more and different dots. One day at the school art show, a little boy commented on what a great artist she was and said he wished he could do that too. She gave him a piece of paper and told him to make a dot, then she asked him to sign and so the story continues. We also read a biography on Georges Seurat. He was an artist that painted with pointillism. The children were amazed when they saw that the painting he created were not from long flowing brushstrokes but short dot like brushstrokes. Our decodable readers this week were: Bears, Hiding and Seeking, Henry and Dad go Camping, and Speedy and Chase. The students immediately made a connection to the story Speedy and Chase because it is a decodable version of the story The Tortoise and the Hare. Every day we practice restating a question about one of the stories we read and citing evidence from the story. On the day we read Speedy and Chase the question they had to answer was" What is the author's purpose for writing Speedy and Chase?" They did very well restating the question and they gave insightful ideas about the author's purpose such as: not to brag, not to be rude to others who can't do things as good as you but my favorite was: slow and steady wins the race! |
