Ohmyword the leaves around are BE.U.TIFUL here! I *love* fall...if only it would last all year! Check this out:
I wish I had a picture of some of the red trees around here...they're so bright they look like they're glowing. Amazing!
So needless to say, this week was the absolute perfect week for a fall literacy theme:
Every morning we read this poem:
We "I spied" colour words, clapped, tapped, winked, and jumped in place of number words, and found sight words in this poem. I love finding poems that hold so many learning possibilities!
In addition to our poem, we also focused on beginning and ending sounds this week
(a key concept when it comes to emergent reading strategies). Throughout the week we built a list of fall vocabulary words, concentrating on just the beginning and ending sounds. Completing this simple group activity helped the kiddies decode the fall words that they would be encountering throughout our week's literacy centres.
Anyways, after our poem and fall vocabulary brainstorm, we moved to literacy centres. Here's a peek at some of our literacy centres this week:
At Word Work 1, the kiddies focused on stretching out each of their letter sounds in order to correctly spell fall vocabulary words. They had to pick out all of the cards with one specific picture and use their sounds to correctly arrange all of the letters and spell a word (ex: students find all of the letter cards with an apple in the corner, and arrange them to spell the word "apples").
Word Work 2 focused on ending sounds. The kiddies matched pictures to their correct ending sounds and recorded their answers on the worksheet.
Pocket Chart centre focused on beginning sounds. Students used the pictures on each leaf to help them read the unfinished words (words missing their beginning sounds) and match them to the correct beginning sound tree branch.
At the end of one day, we happened to read this sweet book:
The little squirrel is so confused by the leaves falling off the trees that he tries to gather them up and "fix" the trees. Throughout the week, the kiddies had a blast pretending to be the squirrel from our story while matching the leaves on to the trees. I *love* that they made that connection!
(How stinkin' cute is this little dude's hair?! I wish I could pull that off...haha!)
Next up, at Write the Room, the kids hunted around the room to match the fall pictures on their worksheet to those stuck on the walls around the classroom:
(you can click the pic below to see details of what's included)
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Anyways, back to centres! My kiddies are still working hard on "writing the WHOLE time" at the Writing Centre. This a *very* tough skill for firsties to learn, especially coming out of the new play-based learning that significantly lacks the structure of first grade literacy centres. Anyways, I am so impressed with how far my kiddies have come just in this past week. We focused on the Writing Centre option of writing a letter this week. They got to write a letter to Mother Nature describing either a real or fictional fall story.
Last but not least, my kiddies are still using our
Sight Word Wands to hunt for sight words in their guided reading books and other books they choose to read throughout their time at the
Reading Centre. They get so excited when a sight word pops up. LOVE it!
And that about wraps it up...I hope you enjoyed getting a little peek at our week! Have a fabulous weekend, everyone :)
