Lowry Park 2012

What a fantastic time

we had at the zoo!!!!

 

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

In honor of the book Wacky Wednesday….we dressed and acted wacky!

Wilson Phonics

We finished up glued sounds when we got back from break.

ing, ang, ong, ung

ink, ank, onk, unk

These were hard for the student but now they are reading them as chunks instead of sounding them out. Examples: thing, hang, junk, dunks, song, sang, lung, king, bank, links

After that unit we began blends which are two consonants side by side. 

sc, sk, sl, sm, sn, sp, st, sw

bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, sl

br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, tr

We also learned about digraph blends which was a consonant and a digraph side by side, such as bunch.  The n and the ch are the digraph blend. 

Last week we introduced closed syllables which is actually all the words we have learned so far now we just call them closed syllables.  A closed syllable has a consonant that closes the door on the vowel and makes the vowel say its short vowel sounds.  We mark the short vowel with a breve (the smile)  and we syllable swoop the syllable.

Here are a few examples on how we mark the words.  We start with marking because it is concrete and visual for the children and slowly they don’t need to mark it to see the phonics patterns anymore. 

Fang has a glued sound and we box the glue sounds.  These are all the glued sounds we know, all, an,am, ing, ang, ong, ung, ink, ank, onk, unk

Rings has a suffix s we underline the base words and circle the suffix s. 

Crash has a blend which we underline the c and the r separate to show they still say their own sound and the digraph ch gets one line because a new sound is made.

Lunch has a digraph blend where we underline the n and and the ch.

Skips has a blend and a suffix s.

The next 4 words are how we mark a closed syllable word.  The breve is over the short vowel and the syllable is swooped.

 

If you have any questions about phonics let me know.  I use to teach it in small group but we have made some changes to our reading block. I now teach it whole group at our desks. We do a dictation almost everyday on our white boards which includes 3 sounds, 3 words, and a sentence.  For example: all, ch, ing,  hangs, chips, bunch, Jeff could walk past the red ball.

Poetry and Text Features

We came back from break and finished up our unit on poetry which was so much fun.  The students compared and contrasted the difference between a poem and a story.  Poems are usually on one page, have rhythm, contain rhyming words, are not in complete sentences, and create an image in our minds.  We discussed more in-depth rhyming words and rhythm of poems.  We also had some fun with alliterations: Sam slipped on the sauce spill at the store.  We used the students names to come up with some silly ones. We jumped into adjectives so that students could identify them when they were creating images in their minds while listening and reading poetry. 

We have been circling nouns, underlining verbs and boxing adjectives like crazy.  We make a BIG DEAL when someone uses an adjective in their writing these days!

We have made the switch from using fiction to teach reading comprehension skills in the first 2 semesters to non fiction for the rest of the year.  We begin this transition with teaching nonfiction text features: photograph, captions, title, heading, glossary, tables of content, illustration, labels, using graphs to interpret information and many more. We took a little over a week to investigate the features and determine their purpose for the reader.  We charted our thinking and now they have been working on their nonfiction text feature books. I brought in magazines and the student have been finding the features and putting them in their feature book.  We have 2 more pages to complete.  We also have compared and contrasted how a non fiction book is different from a fiction story.  They both have a different purpose but can be just as enjoyable. 

We used non fiction books on the Tumblebooks program to introduce captions and photographs! Students have been putting nonfiction books and magazines in their green reading bags since we have been talking about nonfiction text features.