making connections

Morning Meeting/Message

We have been making connections between our reading strategies (sound power, picture power, and sight word power) and all of our work and play. It's important we support children in transferring their knowledge and skills with growing independence.

For example, we can tap, blend and build words during Fundations and writing workshop. When we repeat and practice letter sounds during Fundations, we are making our sound power stronger. When we play with a rhyming puzzle, we are making our sound power and picture power stronger, helping us grow as a reader.

Our use of consistent visuals and language supports transfer across workshops and content areas. 

Fundations

This week we continued listening for and tapping the sounds in words with three phonemes and words that rhyme. We used tiles to show the beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words. We used our magnet board to build words that end the same (or rhyme), changing the beginning sound.

We made the connection to text with a little at-word family book! The children used their picture power and sound power to write the missing beginning sound on each page.

Reader's Workshop

We played two games with our at-word family books.

One game is to cover the picture and use the beginning letter sound and the rhyme (at) to tap and blend the words, helping students to apply strategies to text and not only rely on their picture power.

We also played teacher with a partner! The children took turns pretending to be the teacher, asking their peer to tap (and blend) the sounds they hear in the rhyming words; cat, hat, bat, rat, mat.

At the end of the week the children were presented with a sentence containing sight words and words that we can tap, blend, and read. We studied the sentence and counted the words to read.

The hat is on the cat .

Using all of our reading powers, we worked together to figure out the sentence. We recognized familiar sight words and tapped and blended the sounds in other words.

Then the children reread the sentence on a sentence strip, cut out the words, and put the words back in order, building the sentence. We ensured a space between each word and punctuation at the end.

Finally, using picture power, the children drew a picture connected to the words in their sentence. Through this learning experience the children were also introduced to two new sight words at and on. We can tap and blend the sounds in these words and these are words that we will see and read in many of our books!

hello winter

We have been reading different kinds of books about winter and snow; storybooks and teaching books.

We have connected our reading of "snow stories" to our telling and writing of true stories. This week we read (and reread!) The Snowy Day, retelling Peter's snow story using the words First, Next, Then, and Finally.

Our engagement with stories supports the children as they prepare to tell and write their own true stories, using the words First, Next, Then, and Finally to plan across pages.

The children used words, pictures, and labels to retell Peter's snow story! 

Do you have a snow story to share?

We are telling and writing true stories, like Peter's snow story, but we are also reading and responding to many different kinds of story books about winter. 

We read A Polar Bear in the Snow and used the work of Mac Barnett to inspire a new academic choice; winter art! 

With this choice, you first point and read the sentence; A polar bear in the snow. Then you cut and build your sentence on your canvas. Finally, you use picture power to show a polar bear in the snow. 

The children are very excited about this new choice and eagerly shared their paper collage work with their peers.