Structured Literacy: (phonological awareness, phonics, handwriting, spelling, and decoding)

Last week, students learned about closed syllables. A syllable is a word chunk with one vowel sound. In a closed syllable, there is one vowel letter followed by a consonant, and the vowel makes its short sound. Examples include cat, dig, ham, and job. On Friday, students learned about closed syllable exceptions. These are words that look like they follow the closed syllable pattern—one vowel followed by a consonant—but instead of making the short vowel sound, the vowel makes its long sound. Examples include cold, most, bolt, and wild.

Each week, students will also learn irregularly spelled words, known as “heart words.” These are words that students must learn “by heart” because part of the word doesn’t follow regular spelling rules.

This week’s heart words are into and two.

This week, students will learn about open syllables. In an open syllable, there is only one vowel sound, and the syllable ends with that vowel—meaning it’s not “closed in” by a consonant. The vowel makes its long sound. Examples include go, we, and hi.

Reading

Last week in reading, students focused on identifying the central idea of a text. We read a personal narrative, We Are Super Citizens; an informational book, Meet the Dogs of Bedlam Farm; and a fantasy story, Clark the Shark. Our vocabulary words were:

• guards
• serious
• carefree
• guide
• images
• munch
• bellowed
• rough
• handle
• cool
• bounce
• grinned
• might

This week, we will continue reading Clark the Shark as we learn about the setting. Our vocabulary work will focus on verbs, and we will also practice using antonyms as a vocabulary strategy.

Writing and Grammar: 

Last week, students learned about subjects and predicates. A sentence has two main parts: the naming part, called the subject, and the action part, called the predicate.

This week, students will connect what they’ve learned about subjects and predicates to their writing. They will practice combining two simple sentences to create compound subjects. For example, instead of writing, “The boys ate the cake. The girls ate the cake,” students would write, “The boys and girls ate the cake.”

Students will take a writing assessment on Monday morning and the Reading MAPS assessment on Tuesday morning.