Reading Update

The common theme to our literacy activities this week was “Coming to America.” We talked this week about immigrants who come to America and we discussed reasons that they may come here- we are a strong, free country! We also talked about customs people from other countries bring along with them. Our whole group story was called, “My Name is Yoon.” It was about a little girl who moved with her family to America from Korea. She was hesitant to learn English and to make new friends. When we arrived at the point in the story that Yoon first wrote her name in English, the students in our class actually clapped for her because they were so happy! That was the first time I have seen students react in such a moving way to this story! It was very touching! Our comprehension strategy was making predictions, so as we read through the story, the children paused to think about what was going to happen next. Aside from our whole group lessons, the children met with their small guided reading groups as well. Each group read from the genre of historical fiction. We learned that historical fiction is a story that did not really happen, but was based on true historical events. In the guided reading groups we focused further on this strategy, we practiced our decoding strategies, and we noticed our weekly vocabulary words! Our new vocabulary words from this week included: cuddle, favorite, patient, practiced, settled, and wrinkled. The children also worked this week to identify words with inflected verb endings. We noticed that the ‘ed’ and ‘ing’ at the end of words give us information about when the word is taking place- in the past or in the present!

Our grammar lessons were woven into our reading lessons as well. The children practiced identifying compound subjects and predicates. They also worked to combine 2 sentences that contained redundant information into one clear and concise sentence. We also practiced identifying "talking" sentences, and incorporating quotations marks into these sentences!