Week 18 First Grade
The Hungry Giant’s Birthday Cake (Fiction, Level H) by Joy Cowley
The Giant’s Boy (Fiction, Level H) by Joy Cowley
Sports Around the World (Non-fiction, Level H) by Margie Burton
South America (Non-fiction, Level H) by Mary Virginia Fox
Shapes and Solids Outdoors (Non-fiction, Level H) by Sophie Caribacas
The Poor Sore Paw (Fiction, Level H) by Joy Cowley
We absolutely love that the first grade kits come with so many different books! Now that my little Malachi is such a confident reader he just loves being able to zip through so many books each week, but what I really love is seeing his reading improve week after week after week. This week’s favorite book was The Hungry Giant’s Birthday Cake because of its whimsy. Just the thought of making a gigantic birthday cake with hills of flour and all the cherries of 100 cherry trees made my little guy giggle, and that is why this book takes the cake for us this week.
This week I want to highlight how the Shared Reading activities are helping my first grader improve his fluency and words per minute, and how Step 6 in the Read with Sarah model is helping him improve his comprehension skills. In my early years as a volunteer with young children, I heard so many budding readers sound out the words in a new book with a robotic voice that I almost became immune to it. I am so happy to say that this robotic reading doesn’t visit our home, and I can confidently say it’s because of the AlphaSkills Shared Reading activities! Each week I am amazed at how quickly Malachi picks up the appropriate tone and cadence of books well beyond his reading level! I’m also amazed at how much he is growing in answering the comprehension questions in Step 6 of the Read with Sarah model. We certainly don’t get each question correct for every single book each week, but we are getting better and better, and he is thinking more and more, which is always our goal.
One of the most important aspects of using AlphaSkills for us is seeing visible progress, success, and room to grow. With this week’s choice of books we definitely saw all three of these. It’s obvious to me that we still have a ways to go with the comprehension step in particular, but the visible success in other areas makes it easy to keep going with confidence! For more information about the AlphaSkills Read with Sarah curriculum and our family, see the AlphaSkills Blog Introduction.