Two Sounds of "C"

First, we talked about the two sounds of the vowels: a, e, i, o and u.  Then we learned that 'c' also has two different sounds.  We call them "Hard c" and "Soft c".  Mr. Kevin (Miss Melanie's husband) visited our classroom and was drafted to play the Hard "c" Cat.  Ms. Jan was willing to play Soft "c" Cinderella.  Each of the kids was given a word with a 'c' in it and had to decide which representative his word would stick on.  Kevin and Jan were great sports and the kids had a blast figuring out which way to go.

Spiders Experts are Creeping through Room 12

One of the stories we get to read this year is an entertaining narrative called Diary Of A Spider.  We learned a lot about the three different reasons author's write stories.  It has the acronym P.I.E. Persuasion, Information or Entertainment.  We discussed many different books and the author's purpose.  We read an informative book about spiders and then became authors.  We wrote an informative paper with facts we'd learned and a true narrative of an encounter with a spider.  We wrote facts about spiders on the legs of our spider hats.  We made a habitat and a clay spider.  We made a cracker and pretzel spider and ate it before it ate us.  Hehe! 

High-Frequency Flipping Fun

One of our Common Core goals this year is to be able to read the high-frequency words as well as use them correctly in a sentence.  We used Red/Green talk sticks.  The kids work with a learning buddy.  One partner flips the stick and catches it.  If he catches the green side, he/she goes first to read the word and make up a sentences.  If he catches the red side first, his/her partner goes first. Their sentences are a lot of fun and very interesting.

Practicing Spelling Using Tiles

The kids worked with a learning buddy.  The built short, a, i, o, u and e words.  Then they wrote the words down.  We used their words to have a spelling test.  The kids did amazingly well because they were able to choose the words.