Phonics

We have been doing a big year end review of all of the phonics we have learned this year. It has been very helpful since many of us are at a different stage of reading/writing/spelling than we were when we first learned some of the concepts. We are seeing them in new ways because of this - Oh, I can use this when I am writing not just when I am reading!" We are also using short video clips from nessy.com and The Electric Company television show from PBS (many of these videos feature Lin-Manuel Miranda) to make this more fun. The crew loves the videos from both sources. They are singing them at random times throughout our day. Hopefully this will help them remember these skills and use them when they are reading, writing and spelling from now on. The Nessy videos are all gathered in one place but the Electric Company videos aren't. They are still easy to find by searching. Below are some links to some of the clips we have used that you might want to use at home with your child or when you are on a road trip or in an airport or at a doctor's office or waiting for your meal in a restaurant or...

Nessy Reading Strategy Videos
Nessy Spelling Strategy Videos
Electric Company Videos
Electric Company Videos - with Lin-Manuel Miranda

Electric Company Website - this site has full episodes of the show, video clips and games that support word work and math but the games are not as content driven as the videos

Nessy Apps - We have a couple of these on our ipads at school and the crew really like them. We got the 2 we have when they were having a promotion and they were free. They are now paid apps.

Games

Games, games, games! We use games to learn and practice lots of skills. Games can encourage critical thinking, can take the drudgery out of practice and can boost our social skills. We love to play games. Below you will find photos of us playing a math game called Bunny Hop to learn and practice navigating on a number line and a word work game called Sight Word Bingo to help us learn and practice sight words. Sight Word Bingo is available for purchase at Lakeshore Learning  for $10 if you are looking for fun ways to help your child practice sight words. It comes in three levels so you can choose the level that works best for your child.

Vocabulary

The very best ways to grow your child's vocabulary are through reading aloud to them and talking about anything and everything. Even after your child can read, reading aloud to them is still a very good habit to continue. It will increase their vocabulary, improve their reading comprehension, introduce them to books and topics that they need a little support to understand and create bonds and inside jokes among family members. Please continue to read aloud to your child for many years to come.

Vowels

We are learning about vowels and the various ways that you can spell each long vowel sound. Vowels can be pretty tricky!

Sight Word Bingo

Right before break, someone asked me about the Bingo games in our stations. I decided to take that opportunity to get out one of the games and play it with the whole crew. They loved it! After that they were playing the game all the time during stations. Sometimes you just have to be reminded about things that you enjoy. It happens to all of us. Sight Word Bingo is a fun way to practice those sight words that you just have to know. There are several levels and variations available. I got ours at Lakeshore Learning.

Prefixes and Suffixes

We have been learning about prefixes and suffixes. These are small chunks of letters that are added to the beginning or the end of words to make a new word with a new meaning. We have been learning the meaning of some prefixes and suffixes and hunting for them as we are reading our books. We are learning lots of new words along the way.

Homework ~ Read a good book or two. Check out a Bedtime Math story.

Melting Snowman

As we continue to work on spelling more words correctly, we are playing a game that will help us with that. It is called Melting Snowman. It is basically just the game Hangman but I didn't want to have to explain "hanging" to first graders so I changed the hanging man to a melting snowman (photo below). Play is just the same, you guess letters to complete the phrase and if you guess incorrectly, a part of the snowman "melts" (is erased). You have to guess the word or phrase before the snowman melts. This would be a great game to play at home with your child. It really makes them think about letters, words and how words work. You can play this on paper but it would work better with a small whiteboard or chalkboard since you are erasing parts of the snowman.

MinM
Our MinM next week is Music/Performing Arts.

Volunteer
Today's volunteer is Ms. Carin. Ms. Carin comes in on Thursdays and reads with us and helps us out during stations. I can tell that Ms. Carin is a science teacher because of some of the fun lessons she teaches the crew at the build and create station. Thanks, Ms. Carin.

Spelling

As we continue to work on spelling more words correctly, I wanted to share a few ideas with you that you can do at home to help your child work on spelling.

Commercial Board Games
Have a family game night and play a board game with word play like Scrabble, Scrabble Jr., Boggle, Boggle Jr, Upwords, Bananagrams, Zingo, Word Yahtzee, and many more.

Other Word Play Games
You can also do word searches, crossword puzzles, hangman (or our version called, Melting Snowman ) or other games that just need a paper and pencil. You can buy books of this type of puzzle or you can go online and print some off. Also, many of these games have online versions that are fun to try, too.

You can also just write a long word on a piece of paper and see how many shorter words you can make using just the letters in that word.

Games to Play in the Car
You can have a spelling bee in the car and give each person a word to spell that is at their level.

You can say a word like "hat" and say what would that word be if I changed the "h" to a "c", to an "f" and so on. Experiment with changing beginning sounds, ending sounds and middle sounds.

Play a game based on word families. Name a word family like the "ate" family. Go around the car and have each person say another word in that family: late, skate, fate, date, gate, and so on.

Online Games
Search for word games on your computer, iPad or smart phone for your child to play. There are many, many variations out there.

Be Creative
Make up your own games. Anything that makes kids think about words and how they are spelled will help.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Practice basic addition and subtraction facts by playing a game either online or offline. Try clicking here, here or here for ideas or suggestions.

Guess My Word Game

A fun new logic/word work game that we have learned is Guess My Word.  Directions for this game are below.

Guess My Word

You Need: a partner

One player thinks of a three-letter word for the other to guess. Whenever the person guesses, the player who thought of the word tells whether the guess comes before or after the word in the alphabet.

When we play this game in class, we post a strip of paper that has the alphabet on it to keep track of where the word falls in the alphabet but this part is not necessary. This is a fun game to play in the car.

Homework
No homework for the weekend. Enjoy some great books with your child.

IA
Our IA next week is Art.

Antonyms and Synonyms

While we may not know the actual words antonym and synonym, we are beginning to learn what they are. We use the working definitions of opposite and the same for these but the basic concept is the same. Some of us will remember the correct terminology for this kind of word but most of us will remember same and opposite and that is just fine. Below are a few examples of words we have been talking about.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 6.4 Fact Triangles

Library
We have library tomorrow. Please help your child remember his or her books so that he or she can check out new ones.

Contractions

This week we have been learning about contractions and how they work. The contractions we studied included is, will, have, are, not, have and had contractions with words like I'll, you're, he's, we've, they'd, can't and so on.

Homework
No homework for the weekend. Enjoy some great books with your child.

IA
Our IA next week is Art.

Making Words

One way that we learn and practice various phonics skills is by doing an activity called Making Words. In this activity we all have small cards with letters on them that we use to rearrange and make into different words. A lesson will have a specific word that the letter cards will make along with many other little words using those same letters. All sorts of concepts about how words work come up in one short lesson like this. This activity is also very easy to differentiate for different levels of learners just by changing the questions I ask or by changing the letters that a student has to use. Pictures of us doing this activity today were supposed to go here but I forgot to take any so you will just have to use your imagination.

IA
Our IA next week is PE.

Homework
No homework for the weekend. Enjoy some great books with your child.

Vowels in our Names

We have been learning about vowels and the sounds that they make. Today we made a chart showing the vowels in our first names. Vowels are very important because every word needs one. They are also very tricky because they each make at least two different sounds. Some of them make many sounds - the letter "a" is the trickiest because it can make so many different sounds. We will continue to take a look at vowels and how they work in words.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 4.12 Color by Number

Math Test on Thursday - including items on completing a part/part/total diagram, filling in a section of a number grid, counting a collection of coins, showing that same amount of money using fewer coins, completing a Frames and Arrows diagram, basic addition facts, telling time to the nearest 5 minute interval

Library
We have library tomorrow. Please help your child remember to return his or her library books.

Vowels

Oh, those vowels. They are so tricky and hard to get a handle on when you are first learning about words. During our work work time, we have been learning about how there are many ways to spell the long vowels sounds. We have worked with the silent e, vowel pairs (when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking) and other spelling patterns. We will continue to work on these topics for a while longer. The photo below shows some of the work we have done with vowels. (Remember, you can click on a photo to see a large version.)

If you would like to hear a student's perspective on this vowel work, then take a look at Chloe's ShowMe below:





More Series Books
The latest book series that we are exploring are Fluffy the Guinea Pig and Mercy Watson (a regular pig). Both series are very funny and the crew is already enjoying them. Check out the photos below. There are many books in both series so be sure to check some out on your next trip to the library.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 10.1 Graphing Birth Months

Important Dates
5/21 6th Grade Portfolio Showcase (For more information, click here.)

5/26 No School - Memorial Day

6/4 Last Day of School 

Melting Snowman

Melting Snowman
As we are beginning to work on spelling more words correctly, we are playing a game that will help us with that. It is called Melting Snowman. It is basically just the game Hangman but I didn't want to have to explain "hanging" to first graders so I changed the hanging man to a melting snowman (photo below). Play is just the same, you guess letters to complete the phrase and if you guess incorrectly, a part of the snowman "melts" (is erased). You have to guess the word or phrase before the snowman melts. This would be a great game to play at home with your child. It really makes them think about letters, words and how words work. You can play this on paper but it would work better with a small whiteboard or chalkboard since you are erasing parts of the snowman.

Homework
No homework for the weekend. Enjoy some great books with your child.

IA
Our IA next week is Music.

Contractions

During our word work lessons we have been and will continue learning about contractions. Contractions are words like I'm, I'll, can't don't, etc. These words can be tricky at first for first graders. But once they are exposed to them, they enjoy finding them in their books and other reading. Don't be surprised when your child begins to point them out to you, too.

Kidblogs
If you haven't checked out our Kidblog page lately, you might want to drop by. We have been busy bloggers this week. The link is on the sidebar of this blog page so you can find it easily in the future. Right now you can just click here.

Homework
No homework for the weekend. Enjoy some great books with your child.

IA
Our IA next week is PE. Please help your child remember to dress appropriately.

Word Work

During the phonics or word work time of our day, we learn many things about how words work. Today we did an activity called Making Words. We used letter cards and built words. Our goal was to make as many different words as we could while trying to figure out what word could be made using all of the letters we were given. Along the way we could talk about spelling patterns, word families and how you can change a word by changing one letter. It is a fun way to learn some great strategies to use when reading, writing and spelling words.

First Graders - You Have to Love Them
Today during Exploration Stations, I took a quick walk around the room between reading groups. What I saw was classic first grade. As I passed by the Handwriting Station, I saw this sign:

Good! Go away! We do not need help!

As I walked around to see who had written the sign, I saw this sign laying behind the first sign:

SOS! We need help!

Now I understood that the signs were for Wendy and I. They could change the sign to let us know whether or not the authors of the signs needed help or not. I couldn't help but giggle - first at the authentic use of writing and then because actually, they did need a little help - with spelling. I loved that they were using exclamation marks. We have been talking about how to use punctuation to help us read fluently. I also love that they knew that they didn't spell "need" and "help" correctly. They knew that they didn't look right so they decided to try to add a silent "e" to see if that would help. We talk a lot about checking to see if a word looks right and deciding how to fix it.

Anyway, I walked the rest of the way around the corner and saw the authors hard at work. Clearly, their sign was accurate. They did not need any help. They were working away quite independently.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 3.10 Dimes (This Home Link asks you to send in 10 dimes. You do not need to do that because you sent in all the coins your child would need at the beginning of the year.)

Student-Led Conferences are Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. See you then.

Crew News May 13, 2013

Ashlyn is Getting Better
Ashlyn came to school this afternoon for a few hours after her doctor's appointment. She will be recovering for about a month from her concussion. She brought in some things from all of her hospital visits to show us. It was so interesting. We loved seeing her and hearing her story. She will need to be extra careful to avoid any further head injuries until she heals. So we will all be very careful around her, too.

Ashlyn showed us her collection of hospital bracelets. (She has 3).

She also showed us pictures of her brain and head along with a strip of paper that showed her heart beat.

Sight Words/Word Work

Our new sight words are: about, there, where, who, what
 
Previous words include: and, going, of, for, like, little, look, saw, she, said, the, thing, they, was, with, come, get, from, have, are, some, went, want, out, her, very, favorite, made, here, night, friend, when, because, talk, could, new, nice, kick, rain, house, how, down, people, won't why

We are working on learning to spell these words correctly. We can read them, now we must learn to write them. These are great words to point out to your child when they are reading or to have them practice spelling at home, too. 

Ask your child to explain how we practice these words at school using the Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check method.  

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 9.6 Fractional Parts

All library books are due for this year by Thursday.