“Owls, Celebrations, and Measurement” Week 32 First Grade
Owls (Non-fiction, Level 4) by Susan Ring
We Celebrate (Non-fiction, Level 4) by Brenda Parkes
Let’s Measure It (Non-fiction, Level 4) by Emma Rose
I love the variety and quality of the non-fiction books in the AlphaSkills kits, and this week’s kit contained three great ones. Owls has outstanding photographs and outlines the features of 7 different types of owls. We Celebrate explains the cultural celebrations that make Americans so diverse: Chinese New Year, Cinco de Mayo, Tulip Festival, Puerto Rican Parade, Nisei Week Japanese Festival, and West Indian Day Carnival. Let’s Measure It shows which tools are used to measure weight, length, and volume.
The activity I want to highlight this week is Step 2: Word Recognition and Phonics Development for Owls. For the Word Analysis/Phonics portion of this step I was able to show my first grader the difference between ow in the words owl, powerful, and owlets (ow dipthong) and ow in the words burrows, grow, growth, snowy, snow, and own (vowel variation). Also, we were able to talk about the different sounds for ea in the words great, feathers, head, beaks, eat, real, and leave. For the Structural Analysis/Punctuation/Grammar portion I was able to show him what an ellipses does in a sentence and how to put words in order by the second letter. And all of this from just one of the seven steps in the Read with Sarah model!
I love being able to teach my first grader the phonics and grammar concepts he needs to master while using the books he loves, and that happens every week with AlphaSkills! For more information about the AlphaSkills Read with Sarah curriculum and our family, see the AlphaSkills Blog Introduction.