Fall 2019

“Between the pages of a book is a lovely place to be”.

There is no better way to start a new season than with a newfound love for BOOKS and an eagerness to read. Fall in love with a good book!

First Grade Nest News

Active Listening & Five Finger Retell

In the media center, we continue to work on Active Listening Skills as well as using the Five Finger Retell to recall story elements and events to enhance listening and comprehension skills. Have your child model the Five Finger Retell for you at home after reading a fictional story to help reinforce this skill.

Have your child model the Five Finger Retell for you at home after reading a fictional story to help reinforce this skill.

Five Finger Retell

1. Thumb – The Characters – The people or animals in the story.

2. Pointer – The Setting – Where the story takes place

3. Middle Man – The Problem – The conflict in the story

4. Ring Man – The Solution - How the problem is solved

5. Pinky - Feelings At The End – How did the characters feel at the end of the story?

Character Traits

Readers use text evidence to make inferences about a character by analyzing a character’s actions and dialogue. As reading detectives, students begin to analyze their characters and provide text evidence that helps them infer or draw conclusions about a character’s traits based on what the character feels, how they act, what they say, and how they think. We use the acronym F.A.S.T. to apply this principle. Think “F.A.S.T.” when reading a story!

F.A.S.T.

Feelings Actions Sayings Thoughts

First Grade: Sam A. Mouse from the Series, Library Mouse

Our first graders continue their adventures with Sam and Sarah from the Daniel Kirk series Library Mouse. As each new adventure begins a new story unfolds. Like Sam and Sarah, the 1st graders get to imagine and create their very own adventures by becoming authors and illustrators themselves.

Kindergarten Nest News

Sight Word Recognition

We will begin to work with sight word games and activities to help reinforce this vital skill. Sight word recognition is an important building block of literacy. Encourage your child to point to words that he/she recognizes on the pages while reading aloud at home. This reinforces the concept of print as well as increase sight word recognition.

Tech Connect:

Sight Word Bingo

http://www.abcya.com/dolch_sight_word_bingo.htm

abcya.com helps learners reinforce reading skills from sight words & beyond.

Decodable Readers

Our kindergarten students continue to work on recognizing and identifying sight words both in the classroom and in library. Sight words are one of the major building blocks of literacy. In the past few weeks, decodable readers have been spotlighted in the library. Decodable readers help to build a child’s confidence as reader. Decodable readers are simple stories that contain strong picture support to help beginning readers to read easy repeated phrasing, sight words, as well as phonetically decodable words using letters and letter-groups that the students have learned in class. These books have been promoted in the library and are encouraged daily to be checked out each week! J Ask your child to check one out during their next library period!

Reach for the world…READ!