Unit 6, Week 2 - One of Three / Someone Bigger

     Our Focus Stories this week will help us to answer the essential question: What is it like to be the baby of the family?  Our first story is an example of realistic fiction--One of Three, written by Angela Johnson and illustrated by David Soman.  This story is written from the perspective of the youngest of three sisters, as she reflects on her daily relationships with her older sisters and her family.
     Our second story this week will be Someone Bigger, written by Johnathan Emmett and illustrated by Adrian Reynolds.  "Sam and Dad have made a kite. They have made it large. They have made it light. They go out on a windy day to see if they can fly it but the wind blows hard and Dad thinks Sam's too small to fly the kite. It needs someone bigger - or does it?"
     Our Target Skills this week will be substituting phonemes, blending words, reading with expression, comparing and contrasting, clarification, classifying and categorizing, and subject-verb agreement.  We will also be working to recognize the phonemes /l/ and /w/ in words--in the initial, medial, and final positions.  

Letters: Ll and Ww

High-Frequency Words: have, help, one, ask, every, walk

Selection Vocabulary (One of Three): since, invited, remember, triplets

Oral Vocabulary (Someone Bigger): creatures, firmly, kite, launched, light, replied


Thank you to www.amazon.com for the cover image and summary of Someone Bigger.  

Newsletter for the Week of April 14 - 18, 2014

Newsletter for the Week of April 14 - 18_ 2014 -

Unit 6, Week 1 - Curious George Makes Pancakes / Kitten's First Full Moon

     Our Focus Stories this week will help us to answer the Essential Question: Why is it important to try hard?  Our first story this week will be the fantasy, Curious George Makes Pancakes by Margret and H.A. Rey.  "Every year George and the Man with the Yellow Hat attend the pancake breakfast to benefit the children’s hospital. Always curious, George finds his way to the pancake table. After making some of the most interesting pancakes the crowd has ever seen, George gets into even more monkey mischief."
     Our second story will also be a fiction story--Kitten's First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes.   "It is Kitten's first full moon, and when she sees it she thinks it is a bowl of milk in the sky. And she wants it. Does she get it? Well, no . . . and yes. What a night!"
     Our Target Skills this week will be substituting phonemes, pausing for punctuation, antonyms, drawing conclusions, fantasy vs. realistic text, visualizing, and identifying nouns.  We will also be working with the vowel Uu--working to discriminate the difference between the short and long vowel sounds.  

Letter: Uu

High-Frequency Words: do, went, just, down, little, only

Oral Vocabulary Words (Curious George Makes Pancakes): assistant, enormous, generous, mayor, shocked, volunteers

Selection Vocabulary (Kitten's First Full Moon): seemed, sprang, stretched, tumbled


Thank you to www.amazon.com for the cover images and summaries! 

Newsletter for the Week of April 7 - 11, 2014

Newsletter for the Week of April 7 - 11_ 2014 -

Unit 5, Week 5 - Bread Comes to Life / Pie in the Sky

     This week’s Focus Stories will help us to answer the Essential Question: How do people get food from plants? Our first book falls under the genre of Informational Text. It is entitled Bread Comes to Life by George Levenson, photographed by Shmuel Thaler. This story will take us on a tour of how bread is made from scratch. A thresher, a grinder, and finally, a doughy combination of flour, water, yeast, and oil combine to make a freshly baked loaf of whole wheat bread. 

     Our second story will be Pie in the Sky, written by Lois Ehlert. This text is an example of RealisticFiction. We will join a father and child as they watch over their backyard cherry tree--and all the colorful living things surrounding it--throughout the seasons. At the end of the summer, they harvest the cherries together and make a delicious pie for the whole family to enjoy.

          Our Target Skills this week are blending/segmenting/substituting phonemes, reading with expression, classifying and categorizing seasons, utilizing text and graphic features, identifying the sequence of events, and summarizing information. We will also by reviewing the following letters and their corresponding phonemes this week: Ee, Xx, Jj, Oo, Hh, and Kk. 

Letter/s: Review Ee, Xx, Jj, Oo, Hh, and Kk 

High-Frequency Words: Review over, by, them, ate, her, there, give, could, when, make, say, she, some, play, new, all, away, said, was, he, must, good, then, no 

Oral Vocabulary (Bread Comes to Life): crop, golden, grind, patch, sprout, sturdy 

Selection Vocabulary (Pie in the Sky): buds, damp, feast, finally



Thank you to www.amazon.com for the cover images and summaries!