“Clutter, Money, Boredom, and Fractions” Week 17 First Grade
Clyde Klutter’s Room (Fiction, Levels A-J, Stage 2) by John Tarlton
The Money Book (Non-fiction, Level H) by Jennifer Osborne
Nowhere and Nothing(Fiction, Level H) by Joy Cowley
Parts Make Up a Whole (Non-fiction, Level H) by Margie Burton
Clyde Klutter’s Room is a super fun book about a man who has too much stuff. He builds a room on to his house to hold his extra stuff but soon discovers that there still isn’t enough room, so what does he plan to do? He’ll have to build another room on! My first grader loved the circular pattern of this book, and he was so tickled that he could solve Clyde’s problem quite easily without building anything (just give the extra stuff away). The Money Book is a great resource for reinforcing what first graders are learning in math: money, money, money! This book has each US coin and bill along with some great reading about earning, spending and saving. Nowhere and Nothing is a book about a little boy who has nothing to do and nowhere to go (woe is me!) until he finds a few friends who invite him out to play. This is a great book for first graders because who need a boredom check from time to time. Parts Make Up a Whole is a book about fractions that teaches first graders the following concepts: fraction, whole, halves, fourths, fifths, thirds, sixths, numerator and denominator. What a great introduction a new concept!
The activity I want to highlight this week is the Word Recognition and Phonics Development activity that includes Word Analysis/Phonics/Structural Analysis/Punctuation/Grammar. In this step I was able to teach Malachi which words have the silent e at the end of long a and which words have the short e. We discussed word families and why each word was in each family, which is so helpful in helping first graders learn how to apply what they know to new areas of reading. I know he is well on his way to becoming a confident, independent reader!
For more information about the AlphaSkills Read with Sarah curriculum and our family, see the AlphaSkills Blog Introduction.