We Care About the Earth

In celebration of Earth Week, some of the students in my Kindergarten Phonological Awareness Group were interested in writing about the Earth during the writing portion of our lessons.

First, we did an interactive writing activity about the Earth.  Our sentence about the Earth was "Please take care of me. " Then, the students decided what they would each do to care for the Earth.  We brainstormed these ideas and wrote them down on the white board.  I was so excited about the helpful and thoughtful ideas that were shared!
The children helped to "stretch out the sounds" while we were writing new and familiar vocabulary words.  We clapped the syllables in the new words, decided how many sounds each word has and checked that our words made sense in the story.  Finally, the children published their stories to share, complete with a picture to create an image of their sentence.  We look forward to rereading these stories as a familiar reread and class book, which will help to build reading fluency and comprehension. 

The children are wonderful authors who truly care for the EARTH!  :)

  

 

More about interactive writing:

 

"Interactive writing is a dynamic literacy event in which reading and writing come together."

"Interactive writing is a collaborative writing experience for beginning writers in which the teacher guides students in the group-writing of a large-print text. Students participate in the composition and construction of the text by sharing the pen, physically and figuratively, with the teacher. The composition is read and reread by the group to make the reading and writing connection. "

by, Andrea McCarrier
from :(http://www.cfisd.net/dept2/curricu/ellang/INTERACTIVE%20WRITING.pdf)

 

Earth Day Preparation

Each and Everyday is Earth Day! 

  We can all do our part to help our Earth each day when we :

Reduce (to use less of an item)
Reuse  (to use items again)
Recycle  (to make new items from old items)


Some wonderful Earth friendly books to look for in the library are:

Enjoy reading these books with your children to encourage them to take good care of the Earth!


                                     

Word Family Patterns

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Spring Break and Happy April!

I was happy that children shared with me that they were reading at home over the break and practicing their reading strategies.   :)





An important strategy the children are practicing in lessons is identifying word family patterns in words.  According to research, when children recognize word patterns, decoding more difficult words becomes much easier for them. 

Here is one way we practice word family patterns during a lesson, using magnetic letters, a dry erase board and marker:

To find out more about the importance of word pattern identification and how you can practice at home with your child, please see the article below. 


Word Families

When we consider all the elements that go into becoming a skilled reader it seems a monumental task and yet some how young children learn the many different decoding skills necessary to them and most become proficient readers within the first few years of school.

However not all young children learn to read with ease and even those who will eventually succeed face struggles on the road to success. One easy way that parents can help smooth the path to reading success for their children is through the use of word families.

Word families, sometimes called phonograms or chunks, can really help emergent readers begin to understand our complicated, and often inconsistent, language by providing some predictable patterns within words. As you and I learned to read, we picked up these patterns effortlessly, and they still help us when we try to decode new words. When we direct our child's attention to these same patterns, they too will be able to untangle the seemingly unrelated sounds of English.

When learning to read, patterns are important.
 For example, let us consider the "all" word family. First, show "all" to the child and have them repeat the sound. Then show the word "ball" and demonstrate how you can "read" the word by first making the "b" sound and then the "all". Repeat it slowly and then more quickly. Now continue with some other members of the "all" family such as call, fall, hall, mall, stall, tall, wall.

Can you see how much easier this method of using "chunks" of letters is compared to sounding out one letter at a time? We break words into chunks naturally as skilled readers and teaching children this skill can help them learn to read.

What is even better is that once children learn the 37 most common word families in English they will be able to decode 500 words. That puts emergent readers well on their way to mastering the entire decoding process. The most common word families include: ack, ain, ake, ale, all, ame, an, ank, ap, ash, at, ate, aw ay, eat, ell, est, ice, ick, ide, ight, ill, in, ine, ing, ink, ip, it, ock, oke, op, ore, ot, uck ,ug, ump, unk.

Word families are indeed an efficient way to get children reading. Once children learn these one-syllable phonograms then they will more easily be able to decode longer words, too.

Exposing your child to word families, teaching the use of these language patterns, and reinforcing the knowledge with rhyming games and activities will help your child learn to read.

By Deanne Mascle

Ways to Practice Word Families

Using a chalkboard, whiteboard, magnets or even paper and pencil have your child sound out a word family such as at and print it down. Then have your child say the word cat. Ask them to identify the first sound they hear and have them place it down. Now have them say the word bat. Again ask them to identify the first sound that they hear, have them print it down. Continue until you have completed all of the at family words. * Note some students as they create word families may erase each word and print it new; some may just erase the first letter and keep the at word family; some may list all the at words together.

• Kids Zone - Free printable word family activities
• Read Write Think - Word family sorting game

(article from http://primary123abc.weebly.com/word-families.html)

(umbrulla image from:http://www.ehow.com)