Reading: We concentrated on what characters do and say to help us understand the characters and main idea. We mapped out story elements including characters, problems and solutions. We read mysteries and got to know Cam Jansen and Nate the Great. Many kids had partners to share ideas about stories and work through new words, both meaning and decoding. We learned that authors will show and not tell you emotions and feelings which helped us infer. We also worked on fluency...reading smoothly. The best way is through reader's theater. We read 2 Thanksgiving scripts! Other groups read stories such as School in September and Pam's House to focus on phonics and comprehension. Blends were also reviewed. Groups discussed making inferences,cause and effect,and text to self connections, while reading stories such as The Perfect Picnic and Road Builders. Character traits and cause and effect were discussed. Some groups read non-fiction books like All about Dinosaurs and focused on attributes of non-fiction books, such as fact vs. opinion, headings,captions and photographs.
Writing: We continued personal narratives and added dialogue to make our stories come to life! We came up with a class chart of many fancy ways to say said, in our stories..muttered, squeaked, responded, answered, replied, shrieked. We worked on stretching our stories out with thought out beginnings, middles and ends. .Ask your child about the "SNAKE THAT ATE THE RAT" PLANNING PAGE. We worked in groups to generate lists to Show and not tell or audience how we felt. For example, we'd write..." I had a wide smile, from ear to ear." To show we are happy. We went back to old stories to underline nouns and verbs and then replaced our with strong verbs!! We also went back to edit for capitals and punctuation. Ask your child what happens when punctuation takes a vacation.
Math: We learned doubles and neighbor doubles(doubles plus one and doubles minus one). We read about the magic pot that doubles things and wrote a class book to help reinforce the doubling concept. We learned another strategy to help us add numbers to 20. it is called, MAKE A 10. We could rewrite 9+6 as 10+5. We learned adding 3 numbers can be tricky but using the strategies of finding facts for 10 first and then doubles really helps a lot! We solved word problems and began subtraction facts
Word Work:Our new red words were: some, come, and four. Because, there, sure, one, none, done, what were reviewed daily.. Our blends were "sl" "sp" "spl" and we learned about "r" controlled sounds such as "ar" in star and "or" in corn. We learned a new suffix...-est, meaning most. We are learning about homophones too. Examples are...son, sun, hole, whole. We made a class book and enjoyed a great song on our website at PBSkids.