This week, we learned about another decoding strategy called "Chunky Monkey". When we use Chunky Monkey, we look for "chunks" or word parts you already know. For instance, in the word little we see the word it-little. We also continued to work on word families using the "short /a/" vowel sound. Check out the books we read this week below!
We were introduced to Orson and Taco, two dogs who get into trouble together. We discussed why someone could have a tummy ache. We read this text to find out why Orson has a tummy ache and what happens after he eats all that food. With this text, we focused on making connections to understand the story.
We discussed that this text is nonfiction because it is real. In this story, we worked on main idea and details: bubbles are found everywhere in different forms. We discussed how these bubbles are the same and different. We read to find out about the different places one can find bubbles.
This week, we continued to use our decoding strategies to help us with unknown words in our texts. So far, we have learned about Eagle Eye, Lips the Fish, and Stretchy Snake, and Chunky Monkey. This week, we learned about Skippy Frog. When we use Skippy Frog, we skip a word we don't know and "hop" back to it at the end of the sentence to try a word that "makes sense" when we are reading. Going back and re-reading is an important strategy to use when reading. When you go back and re-read, you are monitoring your understanding and thinking to yourself "Does that word or sentence make sense."
We continued working on word families by introducing the "short /i/" -it word family word. We will begin talking about the differences that our vowel sounds make. We like writing in our Word Work Journals and making words using our Wilson Fundations Magnetic Boards.
In this story, Kayla’s mom is a firefighter and Kayla had similar equipment. We were reading to find out why Kayla might be wearing firefighter equipment. We discussed how mom’s things were real while Kayla’s were pretend. The students were able to infer that Kayla probably might want to be a firefighter just like her mom.
This text is about a boy and his father who grow things in their garden. At the end, rabbits come into the garden. In this story, we worked on sight words we needed to know to be successful with our reading as well as working on inferencing. Students discussed what the father and his son must have done in order to grow such a garden, how they feel about it and how they felt when they saw the bunnies. They were able to provide evidence for their thinking by answering “what makes you think that?”
Another text we read is called “Boots and Shoes” which told about different kinds of boots and shoes and their purposes. With this text, we focused on main idea and supporting details. We compared and contrasted different purposes for wearing boots and wearing shoes.
This week, we continue to move and groove before Thanksgiving Break. We are revisiting the decoding strategies we have learned so far including Eagle Eye, Lips the Fish, Chunky Monkey, Skippy Frog, and Stretchy Snake. We are working hard at figuring out unknown words and going back to re-read which helps monitor our understanding.
We loved reading this book and making connections about what we like to do with our friends just like the characters in this book. We enjoyed writing in our jounals all about our friends!
We then read the text “Apple Pie” and talked about verbs. We played a charades game to practice verbs. We discussed different purposes for writing and we discussed that one such purpose is writing a recipe. Each student wrote their own recipe for how to make apple pie based on the text. Our comprehension strategy was sequencing; we talked about how it would not make sense if we changed the order of the recipe.