Week 35- First Grade

“Drawings, Weird Animals and Halves” Week 35 First Grade

Bunrakkit (Fiction, Level 5) by Joy Cowley

Wonderfully Weird Animals (Non-fiction, Level 5) by Susan Ring

Give Me Half (Non-fiction, Level 5) by Stuart J. Murphy

This week’s kit featured 3 fun books, the accompanying lesson plans, and my first grader’s very first Independent Assessment Booklet (IAB)! And it finally hit me: my first grader is quickly becoming a second grader! We loved the books this week. Bunrakkit is such a fun little book about a boy whose drawing comes to life. Wonderfully Weird Animals is full of strange animals from all over the world. Give Me Half provides a fun way to learn about simple fractions.

The activity I want to highlight this week is the Independent Assessment Booklet for Bunrakkit. As I mentioned before, this is the first time my first grader has encountered the IAB, and it was so fun watching him show how far he’s come. His brother, a 4th grader, has been doing IABs since he was in 2nd grade, so it was quite a big deal for Malachi to see that he is now old enough and smart enough to do what his brother does. Also, this IAB was full of questions and writing prompts that reinforced the following concepts: letter sounds, contractions, word structure, syllables, word relationships, verbs, nouns, pronouns, vocabulary, inference, sequence of events, cause and effect, genre, main idea, comprehension, interpretation, explanatory skills, expression of opinion, and response to literature. We had so much fun! I can’t wait to see what next year’s AlphaSkills kits have in store!

For more information about the AlphaSkills Read with Sarah curriculum and our family, see the AlphaSkills Blog Introduction.