Friday, November 22, 2013
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Unit 3, Week 2 - Storm Is Coming! / Snow
This week our Focus Stories will help us to answer the question: What do animals do when the weather changes? Both stories fall under the genre of Fantasy. Our first story this week will be Storm is Coming! written by Heather Tekavec and illustrated by Margaret Spengler. When the old farmer warns that a storm is coming, the dog spreads the word and leads all of the animals to shelter. Huddled together, they wait anxiously for the storm to come. But who is this frightening creature named Storm, and what will happen when he arrives?
Our second Focus Story this week will be Snow by Manya Stojic. Moose, Bear, Fox, and Hare frolic in a snowy, glowy Winter Wonderland. Winter is coming to the North Woods and the animals are all getting ready for the first big snow.Our Target Skills this week will be blending phonemes, identifying final sounds, reading with expression, classifying and categorizing, identifying verbs in a sentence, forming conclusions, and understanding characters. We will also be working to identify the letter 'Nn' and its corresponding phoneme--/n/.
Letter: Nn
High-Frequency Words: with, my (Please continue to practice all of our High-Frequency words at home!)
Oral Vocabulary (Storm is Coming!): guard, huddle, nodded, pasture, silent, and stampede
Select Vocabulary (Snow): drifted, gathering, swirled, wisely
Thank you to www.amazon.com for the cover images and summary information.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Unit 3, Week 1 - Every Season / Jump Into January: A Journey Around the Year
This week our Focus Stories will help us to answer the question: How does the weather change in different months and seasons? Both of our stories this week will fall into the genre of Informational Text. We will begin with Every Season, written by Anne Love Woodhull and Shelley Rotner. The narrator of this story will take us on a cyclical journey through all four seasons, describing in great detail what makes each season unique.Next we will read Jump into January: A Journey Around the Year by Stella Blackstone and illustrated by Maria Carluccio. This book is full of picture puzzles for us to solve as it takes us month-by-month through the year.
We will focus on the following Target Skills this week: blending phonemes, pausing for punctuation, figurative language, subject of a sentence, comparing and contrasting, and questioning. We will also review Aa, and is corresponding "short" vowel sound.
Letter: Aa
High-Frequency Words: come, me (Please continue to practice all of our High-Frequency words at home!)
Oral Vocabulary (Every Season): bloom, peck, scatter, speckled, store, tracks
Select Vocabulary (Jump into January): glistens, jive, local, orchard
Thank you to www.amazon.com for the cover images and summary information!
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Monday, November 4, 2013
Unit 2, Lesson 5 - David's Drawings / Mouse Shapes
This week our Focus Stories will help us to answer the question: What can we create with shapes? Both of our stories are fictional this week. First up we have David's Drawings--story and pictures by Cathryn Falwell. This text is Realistic Fiction. "In this gentle and appealing story, a boy figures out how to stay true to his own artistic vision while allowing his friends to express their own creativity." (School Library Journal) Our second story this week will be Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh. Three mice show us how they can make and do many different things (They even find a way to trick a sneaky cat!) with a variety of shapes.
Our Target Skills this week include: blending phonemes, reading with expression, classifying/categorizing shape words, adjectives for size and shape, story structure, understanding characters, and summarizing. We will also review the letters and sounds that we have studied thus far (m, s, short a, t, c, and p), as well as their corresponding phonemes--/m/, /s/, /a/, /t/, /k/, and /p/. Letters: Mm, Ss, Aa, Tt, Cc, Pp
High-Frequency Words: Review see, a, we, to
Oral Vocabulary (David's Drawings): add, fluffy, fresh, grinned, moment, shyly
Selection Vocabulary (Mouse Shapes): hurry, pounced, sneaky, tricky
Thank you to www.amazon.com for the cover images!
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Unit 2, Lesson 4 - Good Morning, Digger / What Do Wheels Do All Day?
Our texts this week will help us to understand and answer the question: Why do people use wheels? Our first Focus Story is a Realistic Fiction piece entitled Good Morning, Digger by Anne Rockwell, illustrated by Melanie Hope Greenberg. In this book, boy watches in fascination as construction workers and their tremendous trucks transform a vacant lot into a wonderful new neighborhood center. This story shows the different stages of a building’s construction, from deep hole to its tallest girders—and all the trucks that help along the way!Our second Focus Story will be What Do Wheels Do All Day? by April Jones Prince, illustrated by Giles Laroche. This story falls into the genre of Informational Text. The author uses 29 different action verbs, along with cut-paper illustrations, to describe the purpose that wheels serve.
Our Target Skills this week will be: blending phonemes, reading rate, synonyms, the relationship between text and graphic features, drawing conclusions, questioning, and numbers as adjectives. We will also be working to identify the letter 'Pp', as well as its corresponding phoneme, /p/. Letter: Pp
High-Frequency Word: to (Please continue to practice all of our High-Frequency Words at home!)
Oral Vocabulary (Good Morning, Digger): cement, community, early, vacant, weeds, welding
Selection Vocabulary (What Do Wheels Do All Day?): patrol, sputter, travelers, twirl
Thank you to www.amazon.com for the cover images and summary information!
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