Friday Tip

This past week we celebrated Columbus Day.  Perhaps Columbus didn't "discover" a new world, but he did increase awareness about the western hemisphere. Columbus kept a journal which was later published under the title, I, Columbus.

As a class we discussed the importance of Christopher Columbus, as well as the myths that surround the stories about Christopher Columbus.  We looked at his journal, and created our own journals.  In our journals we wrote about what our first memories are, what we remember about the first day of school, and what our dreams and aspirations are for the future.  

I think the class did a really neat job with this! I think we have some natural born journal keepers (or future bloggers?) in this class!  

I think this would make a fun project to catalogue special days and celebrations. At the end of the year you will have a student created scrapbook/journal!  

Days of the Week!

This is a fun song we have been learning to help us remember the days of the week.

Wilson 1.5

We have progresses to stub-step 1.5.  In this step we introduce new sounds called "glued" or "welded" sounds.  These are sounds that can't be tapped individually, so we "glue" all the letters together and say the sounds together.  For example, if you tapped the word "ball" you would pronounce the word as "b-ah-l. " Glued sounds "all" "an" and "am" are all tapped with two fingers tapped together.  Glued sounds are presented on a single card and are green to differentiate them from other cards.  

We have also learned "bonus letters." A single syllable word that ends in f, l, or s after a short vowel has a bonus f,l, or s added to the end of the word.  Notice that the rows of letters end with an f, l, or s- this is to help reinforce the bonus letter rule.  Bonus letters are kept on the bottom of the alphabet with the digraphs.  Glued sounds are at the bottom.  Notice that all of the vowels are salmon, consonants are yellow, and glued sounds are green.  

Students are also adding these glues sounds to their rules notebooks, and we review the sounds every day.  

We are focusing a lot on word families this year, and we are implementing word sort strategies presented in the Words Their Way program. Glued sounds are also considered word families, and we have been building all kinds of words in the "all," "an," and "am" families.  

A fun strategy to use at home is to build as many words in each family as possible, put the words into piles and color code them! We will be focusing a great deal on word families and doing a lot of sorting and color coding in class over the next few weeks.