Happy Holidays!

As this is our last week of school before the holiday break, there were a number of special events planned. Due to these disruptions to our regular routines, instead of learning a new spelling pattern, we reviewed a few tricky words from our class word wall.
Following our discussions about how authors "paint images" in our mind during our visualization unit, we are now turning towards doing the same in our writing by learning about how to write similes. Similes are comparisons made between two objects using the words 'like' or 'as', such as "Santa's belly shook like a bowl full of jelly" and "Ruldolph's nose is as bright as a lightbulb". After reviewing the concepts of nouns and adjectives we began to write our own similes. We will continue to practice using them in our writing after the holiday break. One activity that we will do will be to do some sensory writing with similes about popcorn. If anyone has any concerns with their child eating air popped popcorn as part of an activity, please let me know so I can accommodate for them accordingly. Thank you and have a wonderful holiday with family and friends!

Visualization and Long Vowel Patterns

We dove into visualization this week by talking about how when authors write books without pictures, they use descriptive words and imagery to help the reader create pictures in their mind. These words that help readers visualize we referred to as "words that stick". The more descriptive the author is, the clearer our mental images can be. Visualization includes all of our senses including sight, taste, hearing, smell and touch. We completed a number of activities where I read the students highly descriptive stories and poems as they sketched their mental images. A cute song that helps us remember about visualization goes to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star:

When my teacher reads a book,
Then my brain begins to look.
Seeing pictures in my head,
As the book is being read.
Making pictures me and you,
You can THINK some pictures too!

We also have been looking at some common spelling patterns when writing words with long vowel sounds. In the last few weeks, we have played with the long 'a' sound made by 'a', 'ay', 'ai' and 'a_e'; the long 'e' sound made by 'ee', 'ea', 'ey' and 'y'; and the long 'i' sound made by 'i', 'igh', 'y', 'i_e' and 'ie'.

Unfortunately, we were unable to have literacy stations this week due to my unexpected absence on Wednesday. Hopefully the will resume next week.