Word bird continues to greet us every morning to teach us a new word that is appearing in many of our reading books and stump us during writing.  (The last few weeks words were: you, my, and to in case you were working on these at home.)  These words are often "trick words" and can not be phonetically sounded out.  Some of the words, however, that word bird has presented are phonetically spelled, but it was important that students become extra familiar with these words early on to help them read beginning readers.  

Our class is also focusing on reading and writing CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant) words.  We looked closely at all words in the at family last week and are learning about the in family this week.  As students become more familiar with word families, it helps them decode new words and helps them spell words at a more fluent pace. This strategy - recognizing familiar chunks in words - has been helpful to students who are at all levels of reading and writing. Whether they're working on words that are 1, 2, or 3 syllables, students are learning to look for familiar chunks inside of these words. Over the last few weeks, we have been using word families to help us with this strategy and to begin looking closely at differentiating short vowel sounds. Often the short vowels can sound similar, so students have been practicing tapping out each sound in order to correctly identify what short vowel it is. Word families, often called phonograms or chunks, provide predictable patterns in words and help us to decode a wide range of new words. The english language is unpredictable and confusing to early readers so it is important for us to help them understand the patterns seen across words. After students learn the most common 37 word families, students will have essentially been able to decode 500 words.