Marking Sentences

I thought it would be useful to post this video of how sentences should be marked during dictation. This

Example of how to mark up sentences. 

is a practice that we do almost every day and has become second nature to the class, but is new for some of our families. The important thing to remember is that only controlled sentences should be marked up.  Under the video I have listed several 3.1 controlled sentences that you can use with your children at home. The purpose of marking up sentences is that it arms the student with concrete strategies to check their own writing. I like to call this their built in spell-checker. Remember that we are only working with closed syllables at this time, and in a closed syllable all of the vowels make the short sound. The only time a vowel is long is when there is a closed syllable exception i.e "old" "olt" "ost" etc.

Some sample sentences to use are:

• Sid did not miss the sunset.
• Bob got a sunfish with his rod. 
• Dad will dust the cobweb in the den. 
• Did Bret get the shellfish for Mom? 
• The dog in the bathtub is a mess. 
• The kids went to rent the Batman flick. 
• Frank thinks that he will finish last. 
• The wild bobcat hid in the shed.
• Beth did not get upset when she lost. 
• Jill had fun with the magnet.
• Do not drop the album in the slush.
• Fill the basket with shells.*
• Did Kim admit that she felt a chill?
• Stan put the napkin on his lap.*
• Kevin did not get upset with Jill.*
• Kim went to the shop to finish the job.*
• Ed went to the cabin by the pond. 
• Bill fell but did not get upset. 
• The big blast upset the pup. 

*These words have a spelling option (k/c). It is okay to tell them to use the a "k." 

Also, full disclaimer that I did not make up these sentences, they are part of the Wilson Reading System. (Besides, who would want to admit making up a sentence like "Jill had fun with a magnet." anyway!)

100th Day of School!

It's hard to believe that we are already at the 100th day of school. We had a fun 100-packed day of

activities.  In an effort to build number sense and use concrete examples of abstract thoughts we made necklaces out of cereal. I encouraged the class to develop a pattern using colors in groups of 10. This was a fun activity, but difficult to keep the kids from eating the "beads" of the necklace!

Our class also made these cute little 100 day hats; again, we used groups of 10 to develop the concept of 100. We discussed what we would buy if we had $100, which was very interesting, but also an opportunity to discuss the average cost of things. Unfortunately $100 won't buy a swimming pool for the school! 

We wrapped up our festivities with a trip to the Dollar Store. Both our class, Mrs. Blodgett's class and

Mrs. McMurphy's class joined us. I was so impressed with everyone's polite manners in the store. The fun thing about the Dollar Store is being able to "you can have anything in this store!"

We wrote stories about what we will do and look like when we are 100, and I found a really cool app

that ages people in pictures. I'm going to make a bulletin board with the stories and pictures we took-They turned out really great (but a bit disturbing)! Check out Davis at 100! I will soon upload pictures of the bulletin board once I have it completed. 

One more picture of the "crazy boys!"