“Independence, Oak Trees, and Robots” Week 36 First Grade
Independence Day (Non-fiction, Level 5) by Trudi Strain Trueit
Math Chat: A Glossary of Terms (Non-fiction, Level 5) by Sydnie Meltzer Kleinhenz
All from an Oak Tree (Non-fiction, Level 5) by Daniel Jacobs
Jojo and the Robot (Fiction, Level 5) by Joy Cowley
We made it! We’ve finished the last week of first grade! This week was full of end of school year celebrations for my little homeschoolers, and these books only added to the fun. Independence Day is all about why we celebrate July 4th in America. From calendars and shapes to numbers and time to measurements, Math Chat is all about the words we use to talk about math. All from an Oak Tree gives a beautiful picture of the animals that benefit from the oak tree from its birth to its death and during each stage in between. Jojo and the Robot is a fun little book about a girl and her robot that teaches kids to be thankful for the people in their lives, even when they fight.
The activities I want to highlight this week are the Reading and Fluency Benchmarks for Jojo and the Robot. These little assessments provide a way for me to check my first grader’s skills and compare his work at the end of the year with work from the first of the year. For the Reading Benchmark, the student reads the first 100 words of the book aloud, and the number of mistakes is subtracted from 100 to find the accuracy percentage. If he achieves 90% or higher, he is ready to move to the next level. The comprehension score comes from answering 4 comprehension questions. If he misses 1 or fewer questions, he is ready to move to the next level. The Fluency Benchmark provides a simple formula for calculating the student’s fluency based on his first, second and third reading of the first 100 words of the book. Both of these tools provide a completely unintimidating way to assess and celebrate progress and readiness for second grade. We can’t wait to see what’s in store next year!
For more information about the AlphaSkills Read with Sarah curriculum and our family, see the AlphaSkills Blog Introduction.