• A Game for Jamie
• Latitude and Longitude
• Seasons

 

Third grade has begun! I honestly can’t believe I have a third grader who has been reading for fun all summer and is ready to dive in to another year of homeschool (with only a few grunts and groans, that is). And what a fun first week we’ve had with these books!

The activity I want to highlight this week is the Problem and Solution Chart for A Game for Jamie. After completing the 7 step Read with Sarah process for this book (Reading Practice, Work Recognition/Phonics Development, Vocabulary Development, Pre-reading Comprehension, Silent Reading, Comprehension after Silent Reading/Oral Reading, and Connecting Reading and Writing), Elijah felt confident and wanted to try the Problem and Solution Chart all on his own verbally, but since this is a level 9 activity and the lesson plan states that these are meant to be modeled by the teacher, I offered to do this one together. First we identified all of the characters in the book. Then we listed a few problems, what happened next in the story, and the solutions that we found. The example provided was that Jamie is blind and is unable to participate in games at recess, so he feels left out. What happens next is that Paul moves to Janie’s school and talks to Jamie, he brings his baby sister’s ball to school, a ball with a bell inside it. The solution is that Paul convinces Jamie to try to hit the ball by listening for the sound of the ball, and although he wants to give up, Paul won’t let him, so the other kids start coaching Jamie and telling him when to swing, and eventually Jamie hits the ball.

This activity, and many others this week, really helped Elijah go from reading what’s on the page to comprehending it and applying the knowledge to his own experience. That is why we love AlphaSkills so much! For more information about the AlphaSkills Read with Sarah curriculum and our family, see the AlphaSkills Blog Introduction.