The hit video of the week is from an old favorite: The Electric Company. This helps highlight how an r can control the sound of a vowel. The vowel will then no longer have its short or long sound. If rap is more your style, check out this one!
Last week we read a play: The Strongest One (retold as a play by Joseph Bruchac). All week long we practiced in our small reading groups, but on Friday we got together in a BIG Readers’ Theater group to finally read it aloud as a play. Looking for something new to listen too? You can download the file of our performance here!
When we listened to the playback in the classroom, I think it was the first time many of our classmates had heard their own voices reading. It was pretty exciting.
Cast (in order of “appearance”:
Narrator- Mrs. Kirincich
Little Red Ant- Owen
Second Ant- Jade
Third Ant- Skyler
Fourth Ant- Cameron
Snow- Adia
Sun- Olivia
Wind- Mikey
House- Hayden
Mouse- Carter
Cat- Drea
Stick- Kelly
Fire- Morgan
Water- Anica
Deer- Matthew
Arrow- Chris
Big Rock- Joshua
We hope you enjoy it!
We’ve now been in school for over 20 days. We are well into our first Reading Street unit and our first writing unit. Our first math unit will be completed by the end of today. By this time most of our students have learned the school and classroom routines and expectations. I expect that we will now be able to go forth full-speed with a lot of learning in the coming months!
This week and next week are both four-day weeks. That means that we have fewer days to practice our spelling words. Please make sure that the study time is happening each evening. This week’s list can be tricky, but once you recognize the pattern it unlocks the spelling mystery!
Here are the generalizations for adding -ed and -ing:
If a word ends in a vowel and then a consonant: double the final consonant.
If a word ends in a vowel, consonant, and then an e: drop the e before adding the ending.
If a word ends in two or more consonants: do nothing- just add the ending.
* When adding the -s ending, you also don’t need to do anything!
Spelling City is a great resource to practice the words. “Find a List” by searching for my name (Jody Kirincich) as the teacher, and then our weekly story title. Our story this week is A Walk in the Desert. (The above link brings you right to this week’s list.)
Remember, spelling lessons should be more about learning the spelling principles so that you can spell ANY similar words- not just the ones that happen to be on the list that week.
Hope that helps- study, study, study…
