Upper Level January

Week of 1/2 - 1/10:

Happy New Year and Welcome Back for some more reading adventures with Mrs. Manning's Go Blue Group! This week, we are diving right back into a new book along with some word work and writing. This week, we introduced another reading strategy "Flippy Dolphin." Flippy teaches us that if we come to a word we don't know we can try a different vowel sound and read the word again. We do this by trying out both the short and long vowel sound. For example in the word "kit" we hear the short i vowel sound (i-itch-/i/) but for the word "kite" we hear the long i vowel sound (i-pine-/i/). By practicing both the short and long vowel sounds using the Fundations letter-keyword-sounds we can recognize the differences between the sounds. We also talked further about the -vce syllable where a silent e at the end of word makes the vowel say it's name. Check out the new book for this week below!

G56 Kate's Truck.pdf

We loved reading about Kate's truck and all of the toys she could fit in the back. We made predictions about the story and even wrote our own ending, thinking about what happened when Kate's truck bumped into a rock and the toys fell out.

G54 Play Ball.pdf

The next text we read this week we read was “Play Ball!” about different sports that involve balls and where they can be played. With this text, we focused on main idea and details. We also practiced the sight words within the text that were essential for reading. Each child wrote about one sport that uses a ball. We compared and contrasted how the sports might be the same or different.

Week of 1/13 - 1/17:

We continue to move and groove during our Go Blue Reading Time! These past two weeks we have continued to focus on short vowels vs. long vowels as well as working with short "o" word family words including -ot and -op. We enjoy making word family words on our Wilson Magnetic Boards, writing words in our Word Family Journals, and playing Word Family games with spinners. This week we have also reviewed the importance of using ALL the strategies that we have learned to help us with unknown words. We can use Eagle Eye, Lips the Fish, Chunky Monkey, Stretchy Snake, Skippy Frog, and Flippy Dolphin if we get "stuck" on a word...WOW! Continue to encourage your children at home when they are reading to work through these strategies instead of "guessing" the word. This will not only help their reading accuracy, but will help their comprehension as well because they will be able to read for greater meaning. We have also been working on our writing stamina. We write about our books each week through various writing prompts, graphic organizers, or in our writing journals. Check out our latest and greatest books below!

G41 The Three Pigs.pdf

We read “The Three Pigs.” 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.

G43 Up in a Tree.pdf

With this story, we discussed problem and solution. Meg’s cat named Hugs was stuck up in a tree and Meg had to try different things to help get the cat down. At the end, they realized that the story had a slightly different ending than they predicted. After reading, we wrote about the story using the Beginning/Middle/End format.

Week of 1/21 - 1/25:

This week, we continue to monitor our understanding when we are reading. If a word does not look right, sound right, or make sense, we are encouraging students to go back and re-read to check their understanding. We are also working on building our "writing stamina" and continuously adding details to our writing. As we continue our word work, we introduced the -ot and -ock word family words. Talk to your children about the books below and ask them to re-tell the stories in their own words using sentence starters like "First, Next, Then, and Last."

G45 Time for Lunch.pdf

In this story, Mother Bear needed to collect lunch for each member of her family. While reading, we focused on sequencing – how the story happened in order. After reading, we focused on problem and solution. We had to make predictions about what Mother Bear would do next to feed her family.

G47 The Good Dog.pdf

Students loved reading about Orson the dog in “The Good Dog” (it’s their favorite series that we read!) and using text-to-text connections to infer character traits about Orson. We had a discussion about why the author may have titled this book “The Good Dog” instead of “The Bad Dog.” We about our opinion about whether Orson was a good or a bad dog. We supported these opinions with reasons and evidence from the text.

Week of 1/28 - 2/1:

The "Goal Getters" of Mrs. Manning's group worked hard learning about a new strategy we can use when we come come to a word we don't know..."Rhyming Lion." When we use Rhyming Lion, we can look at words with the same ending sound to help us try to figure out the unknown word. For example, when working with -et word family words, if we can read pet, then we can read wet, set, etc. We enjoyed rhyming chants and making these word family words on our Wilson Magnetic boards. Check out the awesome books we read below! :)

G49 What am I.pdf

In “What Am I?” we talked about riddles and using evidence from the text to support your predictions. The students noticed that the author did a “terrible job” as one student put it by putting the picture right next to the words. We covered up the pictures and used our brains and our schema to make guesses what the animals were. Another student pointed out that we could write better riddles that gave more detail so students wrote their own (and much better!) riddles. They brought these home this week... I bet you were able to guess their mystery animal since their "clues" were so specific!

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