Main Level January

We read a story called “Three Little Pigs and a Big Bad Wolf.” With this text, we focused on fluency and main idea (using the somebody….wanted…but…so…finally) model. Students were so excited about this story, as it is one that they all were familiar with. We read to find out how this story was the same or different than other versions they may have heard in the past. This story also has a fluency component, as there is a “script” in the back. Each child took turns reading all of the different parts to practice their speed and prosidy of reading. For writing, we wrote about the story using beginning, middle, and end.

Another text we read was “The Soccer Game.” It is about two characters who are cousins (Sam and Jesse) that some students have read about before. The two boys go to the park with their Papa to play soccer. We focused on the strategy of comparing and contrasting the two characters. We also talked about what the moral of the story is. We also discussed character traits and came up with a list of character traits about Sam and provided evidence from the text as to why the traits described him.

In this text, students had to use inferencing skills and evidence from their schema (what they know in their brain) and the text to determine what the monster was. For writing, each student chose an animal, cut up the picture into pieces and write about each piece and have the other students in the group guess what their animal is.

The next text was “Pictures of Hugs.” With this text, we focused on problem and solution. Meg wanted to take a picture of her cat but her cat kept on moving. Before reading, we practiced some phonics concepts that were common in words throughout the text – such as words with vowel teams (ex. ea) or words with a silent e (ex. use, chased) and how to decode these words. We wrote about the story using the first, then, next, finally format.

We also read “The Big Storm” about some favorite characters – Orson and Taco, two dogs who always have silly adventures. We created a big Venn Diagram where students brainstormed some similarities and differences between the two characters. After this, we worked on character analysis of one of the characters and talked about character traits and adjectives to describe Orson on the outside and the inside.

We read a story called “Goldie and the Three Bears.” With this text, we focused on fluency and main idea (using the somebody….wanted…but…so…finally) model. Students were so excited about this story, as it is one that they all were familiar with. We read to find out how this story was the same or different than other versions they may have heard in the past. This story also has a fluency component, as there is a “script” in the back. Each child took turns reading all of the different parts to practice their speed and prosidy of reading. For writing, we wrote about the story using beginning, middle, and end.

We read “Papa’s Birthday.” It is about two characters who are cousins (Sam and Jesse) that some students have read about before. The two boys cannot decide what to get their Papa for a birthday present. We focused on the strategy of comparing and contrasting the two characters. We also talked about what the moral of the story is. We also discussed character traits and came up with a list of character traits about both Sam and Jesse and provided evidence from the text as to why the traits described him.

We read a text called “Baby Bird.” With this text, we really focused on suffixes at the end of the word and paying attention to the meaning. We were reading to find out where baby bird was in this story, and the students were able to predict that he was in the egg the entire time based on their knowledge of birds.

We read “The Goat in the Garden.” We discussed author’s purpose and moral of a story. Based on the events in the story, students brainstormed that the moral of the story must have to do with size; you should never judge someone because of their size – sometimes it is the tiniest who are the strongest. With that story, we focused on telling and writing about the main idea using the format of: Somebody – Wanted – But – So – Finally.

This non-fiction text discusses the life cycle of a frog. We used a graphic organizer to help us write about the life cycle of a frog. We discussed what a cycle is and compared it to other life cycles we know. We discussed that texts are written for different purposes and the purpose of this book is to inform.

We read “The Skunk with No Stripes.” In this text, students had to figure out what the moral of the story was. We discussed the last lines of the text at length: “stripes or no stripes, I am a skunk for sure” and how this can relate to their own lives.

We moved up to a new reading level! We first read a story called “The Gingerbread Man.” With this text, we focused on fluency and main idea (using the somebody….wanted…but…so…finally) model. Students were so excited about this story, as it is one that they all were familiar with. We read to find out how this story was the same or different than other versions they may have heard in the past. This story also has a fluency component, as there is a “script” in the back. Each child took turns reading all of the different parts to practice their speed and prosody of reading. For writing, we wrote about the story using beginning, middle, and end.