This week we are concentrating on the -an word family. We have been reading and writing many different words that are part of this family (man, can, fan, ran, etc). During reading, we have been focusing on finding chunks in words that are unfamiliar to us. We look for the -an chunk when reading these short words but also can look for this chunk when reading bigger words such as hand, stand. Looking for chunks in words when reading larger words has helped increase each student's ability to decode words during reading of new books.
Reading and writing go hand in hand, so the students are working on remember these chunks when writing stories during writer's workshop. They are also working on remembering to go back and re-read what they write and re-read when they stumble on words in their just right readers. Going back to re-read helps children become more fluent readers.
We continue to work on mastering our skills at blending and segmenting C-V-C words. Most students have perfected the beginning and ending sounds, while we all continue to practice those tricky vowel sounds. We are paying attention to what our mouths do while saying vowel sounds and have been working on holding each vowel sound in C-V-C words for a bit longer time. The students have been engrossed in a variety of interactive games to help practice these skills. Our sight words are mixed in with many of these games so we continue to get more practice reading and writing these tricky words.
I have been impressed with each child's ability to spell their last name each morning. Many students are on their way to independently spelling their last names by heart and have been having fun learning their peers as well!
