Unit 6, Week 3 - The Little Engine That Could / You Can Do It, Curious George!

    This week’s Focus Stories will help us to answer the Essential Question: Why is it important to help your friends?  Both of our stories fall under the genre of Fantasy. 

     Our first story this week will be The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper, illustrated by Loren Long.  A little train carrying oodles of toys to all of the good boys and girls is confronted with a towering, seemingly impassable mountain. As nicely as they ask, the toys cannot convince the Shiny New Engine or the Big Strong Engine--far too impressed with themselves--to say anything but "I can not. I can not." It is left up to the Little Blue Engine to overcome insurmountable odds and pull the train to the other side.

     Our second story this week will be You Can Do It, Curious George! By Margaret and H.A. Rey.  In this story, we will join one of our favorite characters as he learns what it is that he does best. 

     Our Target Skills will be substituting phonemes, pausing for punctuation, blending words, using context clues, subject-verb agreement, and making predictions.  We will also be working to match the phonemes /z/ and /v/ to their corresponding letters. 

Letters: Zz and Vv

High-Frequency Words: look, very, their, saw, put, out

Oral Vocabulary (The Little Engine That Could): bellowed, dingy, rumbled, valley, waiters, and weary

Selection Vocabulary (Curious George): chef, different, prize, and slope

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

Newsletter for the Week of May 5 - 9, 2014

Newsletter for the Week of May 5 - 9_ 2014 -

Snapshot of our Field Trip to the Nashville Zoo

Easter Egg Hunt Pictures

May 2014 Menu

ELEMay20141 -

May 2014 Calendar

May 2014 Calendar -

Newsletter for the Week of April 21 - 25, 2014

Newsletter for the Week of April 21 - 25_2c 2014 -

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! 

Newsletter for the Week of March 31 - April 4, 2014

Newsletter for the Week of March 31 - April 4_ 2014 -

April 2014 Calendar

April 2014 Calendar -

April Menu

Elem April 2014 -

Unit 5, Week 4 - Red Eyes or Blue Feathers / Chameleon, Chameleon

     This week our Focus Stories will help us to answer the essential question: How do animals' colors help them survive? Both of our stories fall into the genre of Informational Text.  Our first text will be Red Eyes or Blue Feathers, written by Patricia Stockland and illustrated by Todd Ouren.  This story describes how animals survive in the wild by adapting their colors to the environment that they live in. A few of the animals shown include a red-eyed tree frog, a polar bear, a red fox, a seahorse, a killer whale, a macaw, a black rhinoceros, a jewel beetle, and a chameleon.
     Our second text is entitled Chameleon, Chameleon and is written by Joy Cowley, photographed by Nic Bishop.  Through this story we will experience the many moods (and colors) of chameleons. One brave chameleon ventures from the safety of his tree in search of a new home. On his journey, he meets other rain forest animals, not all of them friendly! Alas, the new tree he chooses is already home to another chameleon. She dons her aggressive coloring until she's sure that the visitor is friend, not foe. Then they welcome each other with brilliant, happy colors
     Our Target Skills this week will be blending and segmenting phonemes, substituting phonemes, pausing for punctuation, classifying & categorizing, adjectives, drawing conclusions, identifying the author's purpose, and the capitalization & punctuation of questions.  We will also be working with the initial phonemes /h/ and /k/.  

Letters: Hh /h/ and Kk /k/

High-Frequency Words: he, no, away, by, must, there (Please continue to practice all of our High-Frequency Words at home!)

Oral Vocabulary (Red Eyes or Blue Feathers): communicate, mood, scent, sly, survive, temperature

Selection Vocabulary (Chameleon, Chameleon): danger, juicy, peaceful, poisonous



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

Newsletter for the Week of March 17 - 21, 2014

Newsletter for the Week of March 17-21_ 2014 -

Unit 5, Week 3 - Oscar and the Frog / Zinnia's Flower Garden

     This week our Focus Stories will help us
to answer the Essential Question: What steps can someone follow to plant and grow flowers? As such, both of our stories are Informational Texts this week.  Our first story will be Oscar and the Frog by Geoff Waring.  "Oscar is a curious kitten, and at the pond he is full of questions about growing things. Luckily, Frog can help with the answers — after all, he’s gone through some impressive changes himself! From butterflies to ducks, plants to kittens like him, Oscar finds out how living things begin, why they eat, and how they grow."
     Our second story will be Zinnia's Flower Garden by Monica Wellington.  "Springtime is here, and Zinnia can’t wait to plant her seeds and watch them grow. She carefully takes care of her garden, watering her plants, weeding, and waiting patiently for something to sprout. And soon enough, the first seedlings appear!"
     Our Target Skills will be blending and segmenting phonemes, substituting phonemes, pausing for punctuation, using context clues, identifying the sequence of events, utilizing text and graphic features, and visualizing. We will also be working on distinguishing between the long and short 'Ee' vowel sounds.  

Letter: Ee

High-Frequency Words: she, all, over, when, her, come

Oral Vocabulary (Oscar and the Frog): bank, gills, hatch, shrink, stared, tadpole

Selection Vocabulary (Zinnia's Flower Garden):  fragrant, inspects, pesky, sprinkles

Newsletter for the Week of March 10 - 15, 2014

Newsletter for the Week of March 10-15_ 2014 -

Unit 5, Week 2 - A Tiger Grows Up / Leo the Late Bloomer

     This week's Focus Stories will help us to answer the essential question: How do things change when someone is growing up? Our first story is an informational text entitled A Tiger Grows Up, written by Anastasia Suen.  Through this book, we will follow the development of a tiger from infancy to adulthood, as she grows up in India.
     Our second story this week will be a Fantasy--Leo the Late Bloomer--written by Robert Kraus and illustrated by Jose Aruego.  Leo the tiger isn't reading, or writing, or drawing, or even speaking, and his father is concerned. But Leo's mother isn't. She knows her son will do all those things, and more, when he's ready.

      Our Target Skills this week will be blending and segmenting phonemes, substituting phonemes, reading rate, story structure, determining the sequence of events, analyzing and evaluating, and antonyms.  We will also work on isolating the the phonemes /x/ and /j/.

Phonemes: /x/ and /j/

High-Frequency Words: said, was, then, good, ate, could

Oral Vocabulary (A Tiger Grows Up): blend, cub, den, pounces, prey, and scraps

Selection Vocabulary (Leo the Late Bloomer): bloomer, patience, signs, and sloppy



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