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

This week, students will learn about the schwa sound. The schwa is the most common vowel sound in English, but it can be tricky because it doesn’t always match the vowel letter we see. It sounds like a quick, soft “uh” sound (like in the word about).

You’ll find schwa in many words, especially in unaccented syllables. For example:

• a in about → /uh/
• e in problem → /uh/
• o in lemon →/i/
• u in supply → /uh/

Because schwa can be spelled with any vowel, it’s important for students to listen carefully to how the word sounds rather than relying only on the spelling. Learning about schwa helps students read longer words more smoothly and spell more confidently.

These lessons help students recognize common spelling patterns and grammar rules, building confidence as readers and writers.

❤️Heart Words❤️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: “woman” and “women.”

Reading:

This week in reading, we will read “If You Find a Rock” as we learn about the central idea of a text. Then we will read the skit, “The Puddle Puzzle.” We will learn the comprehension strategy of “Ask and Answer Questions.” Then students will learn about the Elements of Drama. Our third text of the week is “Looking at Art” in which we will focus on connecting text and visuals.

Central Idea: This week, students will learn how to identify the central idea of an informational text. The topic of a text is the person, place, or thing it is about. The central idea is the most important point the author wants to make about that topic. Students will first figure out the topic, then look for supporting evidence—facts or examples that explain the author’s main point—and think about what that evidence has in common.

Ask and Answer Questions: One way for students check their understanding of what they read is by asking and answering questions about the text. We encourage children to ask questions before, during, and after reading because it helps them pay attention to details and stay engaged. Students also practice using words like who, what, where, when, why, and how to form their questions. To answer them, they look for evidence in the text and pictures—clues and details that help confirm their thinking. This strategy helps students stay focused, understand information more deeply, and build strong reading habits.

Elements of Drama: Drama is written differently than stories or poems, and understanding its features helps students make sense of what they see and read. A drama, or play, is written to be performed by actors, so it is organized into acts and scenes instead of chapters or stanzas. The characters’ words are written as dialogue, and instructions for how the play should look or sound are given in stage directions. Like stories, dramas include important elements such as characters, setting, and plot, but they are presented through action and speech. Learning about these features helps students understand how drama tells a story in a unique way.

Connect Text and Visuals: When children read, both the words and the visuals—such as pictures, drawings, and illustrations—work together to tell the story. Text and visuals often give important details about the characters, setting, and events. Sometimes the visuals even show information that isn’t directly written in the text. Paying close attention to these details helps students better understand what is happening in the story. Children also learn to notice how the placement of printed words on a page can add meaning, such as showing which character is speaking. By connecting the text and visuals, students build a deeper and more complete understanding of what they read.

If You Find a Rock is a gentle, poetic book that celebrates the many kinds of rocks children might discover outdoors. Each type of rock is described by how it can be used—like a skipping rock that bounces across the water, a sitting rock that’s just right for resting, or a wishing rock that holds a secret hope. Paired with beautiful photographs, the book invites readers to notice the small wonders of nature and connect their own experiences with the natural world.

The Puddle Puzzle tells the story of siblings Taylor and Brandon, who run a detective agency. One day, Carlos and Adriana come to them with a mystery: their puddle has disappeared! Through clever detective work and scientific thinking, Taylor and Brandon discover that the puddle vanished because it evaporated into water vapor under the heat of the sun. The story combines mystery and science to teach students about the water cycle and how temperature affects water.

Looking at Art by Andrew Stevens, and Soap Bubbles by Jean Siméon Chardin this week, students will explore the painting Soap Bubbles by Jean Siméon Chardin by using ideas from Andrew Stevens’s Looking at Art. Chardin’s painting shows a young boy carefully blowing a soap bubble, with the delicate bubble shimmering in the light. As part of our comprehension work, students will practice connecting text and visuals by noticing how words and pictures work together to tell a fuller story. In this lesson, the painting serves as the “visual text,” and Looking at Art provides the written text. By examining both closely, students learn how visuals add details or meaning that words may not explain, and how the two support each other to deepen understanding.

Our vocabulary words for these texts are:

• agency
• business
• confidently
• located
• eagerly
• seeps
• mystery
• ace

Writing: Students have chosen topics for their descriptive essays, and we have begun the research phase of prewriting. They are listening to a book on Epic! and taking notes about what they learn. These notes will be turned into sentences and then developed into a full paragraph.

During independent writing time, students are also working on typing their stories from our personal narrative unit.

Grammar:
This week, students are learning more about how nouns work. They are reviewing that nouns name a person, place, or thing, and focusing on two specific kinds of nouns. First, they are learning about nouns that name places, for example, school, park, city, or Colorado. Second, they are learning about collective nouns, which name a group of people, animals, or things, like team, flock, or family. Understanding these types of nouns helps students describe the world around them more clearly and use precise language in their speaking and writing.

Ways to Support Literacy at Home

• Your child should read 10-20 minutes every night. Research shows that reading each night, even for just 15 minutes, makes a big difference in a child’s growth as a reader. Regular practice helps children expand their vocabulary, recognize letters and sounds more easily, and strengthen focus and memory. Daily reading is also linked to stronger language skills, better reading performance, and can even serve as a calming routine before bedtime.
• Practice Heart Words: Review this week’s heart words (about, away, around) with your child. You can write them on index cards, post them on the fridge, or play a quick “read it, spell it, say it” game.
• Spot the Schwa: When reading together, listen for the schwa sound—the quick “uh” or “i” sound any vowel can make in an unstressed syllable. Examples include the a in about or the o in lemon. Encourage your child to point out which vowel is making the “uh” sound.
• Ask and answer questions: Prompt your child to ask questions before, during and after they read a story each night.

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

This week, students will learn about three-consonant blends (scr-, str-, spr-, squ-, thr-, shr-) as well as the ending blend -nch. A consonant blend is two or more letters that come together, with each letter keeping its own sound. Examples of words with these patterns include scrap, string, sprung, squish, thrift, shrug, and inch.

Students will also learn about contractions with the words have, would, and will. A contraction is a shorter word made by combining two words and leaving out one or more letters, with an apostrophe showing where the letters are missing. For example, I have → I’ve, she would → she’d, and we will → we’ll.

These lessons help students recognize common spelling patterns and grammar rules, building confidence as readers and writers.

Heart Words: 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: about, away, and around.

Reading:

This week in reading, we will read “It’s Only Stanley” as we learn about setting. Then we will read the text, “The Great Fuzz Frenzy.” We will learn the comprehension strategies of “Make Connections” and “Connect Text and Visuals.” Our third text of the week is “Water Rolls, Water Rises”, in which we will focus on “creating mental images” and the “Elements of Poetry.”

Setting: Students will learn that the setting is when and where a story takes place. The setting can stay the same throughout a story, or it may change as events unfold. Authors give clues about the setting through details in the text—such as the place, time of day, or time of year—and through illustrations that show the surroundings. By paying attention to these clues, readers can better understand the mood of the story, how the setting affects the characters, and why certain events happen the way they do.

Make Connections: When children make connections as they read, they link the text to something they already know. This helps them understand and remember what they read. Readers can connect a story to their own life (text-to-self), to another book they’ve read (text-to-text), or to something they’ve seen or experienced in the world around them (text-to-world). Asking questions like “What does this remind me of?” or “Have I read or experienced something like this before?” helps students strengthen these connections and deepen their understanding of the text.

Connect Text and Visuals: When children read, both the words and the visuals—such as pictures, drawings, and illustrations—work together to tell the story. Text and visuals often give important details about the characters, setting, and events. Sometimes the visuals even show information that isn’t directly written in the text. Paying close attention to these details helps students better understand what is happening in the story. Children also learn to notice how the placement of printed words on a page can add meaning, such as showing which character is speaking. By connecting the text and visuals, students build a deeper and more complete understanding of what they read.

Create Mental Images: This week, students will practice creating mental images while they read. Creating mental images means making a “movie in your mind” using the details from the text. This helps readers better understand and remember what they read.

Elements of Poetry: Poems are written differently from stories, and understanding how helps students make sense of what the author is saying. Poems usually have fewer words than stories, and poets often use rhythm, or a beat, that can sound like music when read aloud. Instead of paragraphs, poems are organized into lines and stanzas (groups of lines). Many poems use patterns—such as repeated words, sounds, or beats—that make them fun to read and easier to remember. Like stories, poems also use descriptive words and phrases to show how things look, sound, feel, smell, and taste, helping readers create pictures in their minds. Learning about these features helps students better understand a poem’s main message.

It’s Only Stanley is a humorous story about the Wimbledon family, who are repeatedly awakened at night by strange noises. Each time, they discover that it’s only their dog, Stanley, who is busy with unusual projects around the house. The story builds with silly rhymes and surprises, ending in an unexpected twist that delights readers.

The Great Fuzz Frenzy by Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel is a funny story about a group of prairie dogs who discover a fuzzy tennis ball that falls into their burrow. At first, the prairie dogs are thrilled, and chaos breaks out as they each grab bits of fuzz to wear, decorate, and play with. But soon, the frenzy turns into a problem when greed and fighting take over. In the end, the prairie dogs learn an important lesson about sharing, cooperation, and what truly matters.

Water Rolls, Water Rises by Pat Mora is a beautifully illustrated book that takes readers on a journey around the world to show the many ways water moves and shapes our lives. Through poetic language in both English and Spanish, the book highlights how water flows, rises, crashes, and glides in rivers, oceans, lakes, and rainstorms across different cultures and landscapes. It helps children appreciate the beauty, power, and importance of water everywhere on Earth.

Our vocabulary words for these texts are:

• gasped
• frenzy
• battleground
• feud
• strokes
• tumbling
• plumes
• wisps

Vocabulary and Language Development
This week, students are learning how affixes change the meaning of words. They are reviewing that a noun names a person, place, or thing, and that adding -s or -es makes a noun plural (for example, plume → plumes or dish → dishes). They are also learning that verbs are action words and adding -s or -es to a verb shows the action is happening now (for example, stroke → strokes). Understanding how these endings change words helps students become stronger readers and writers by recognizing patterns and building vocabulary.

Writing: 

We will begin the prewriting phase of our next writing project—writing a descriptive essay. Students will brainstorm words and phrases on a topic, use their background knowledge to prepare, and share information and ideas with their classmates. As we read a mentor text, they will analyze how the author organizes and describes information and discuss the features of informational writing using academic language. Then, students will set goals for their own writing, identify a main topic, and gather supporting details. Using prewriting strategies, they will plan their essays and begin preparing to draft.

During independent writing time, students will also work on wrapping up their personal narratives from our last unit.

Grammar:

On Monday, students will analyze another piece of writing to see how using exact nouns creates a vivid picture in the reader's mind.

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

This week, students will learn about the digraphs sh, wh, th, and ch. A digraph is two letters that come together to make a single sound. For example, ch in chip, sh in ship, th in thin, and wh in whale. These lessons help students recognize common spelling patterns and become more confident readers and writers.

Heart Words: 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 word is “very.”

Reading:

This week in reading, we will read “Violet the Pilot” as we learn about characters. Then we will read the text, “Picture Day Perfection,” we learn the comprehension strategies of “Create Mental Images,” “Central Idea,” and thinking about the characters in the stories.

Characters: Students will learn that characters are the people or animals a story is about. Authors give clues about characters through external traits—what they look like on the outside—and internal traits—what they think, feel, or do. By paying attention to these traits in both the text and illustrations, readers can better understand a character’s perspective and why they react the way they do.

Create Mental Images: This week, students will practice creating mental images while they read. Creating mental images means making a “movie in your mind” using the details from the text. This helps readers better understand and remember what they read.

Central Idea: This week, students will learn how to identify the central idea of an informational text. The topic of a text is the person, place, or thing it is about. The central idea is the most important point the author wants to make about that topic. Students will first figure out the topic, then look for supporting evidence—facts or examples that explain the author’s main point—and think about what that evidence has in common.

Violet the Pilot by Steve Breen is the story of a young girl named Violet who loves building flying machines. Although some kids tease her for being different, she focuses on her passion for inventing and flying. When an emergency happens, Violet uses her skills to help others, showing courage, creativity, and kindness.

Picture Day Perfection written by Deborah Diesen, illustrated by Dan Santat, is the story of a boy who is determined to have the worst school picture day ever. From making silly faces to wearing a messy shirt, he plans every detail for a perfectly bad picture. But when the big moment comes, things don’t go quite as he expected—leading to a surprising twist.

Our vocabulary words for these texts are:

• planned
• perfect
• hamper
• disaster
• scowl
• mood
• queasy
• fiddled

Vocabulary and Language Development
This week, students will learn how to identify and use the inflections -ed and -ing. They’ll practice adding these endings to verbs to show past actions (-ed) and actions happening now (-ing), and use them correctly in their speaking and writing. Examples include jump/jumped/jumping, play/played/playing, and cook/cooked/cooking.

Writing: 

This week, students will continue working on their personal narratives, ensuring they have a clear beginning, middle, and end with details about the characters, setting, conflict, and resolution. On Monday, they will prewrite their ideas, and on Tuesday and Wednesday they will draft their stories. On Thursday, students will begin revising, focusing on nouns—reviewing the difference between common and proper nouns and ensuring proper nouns are capitalized. On Friday, they will share their narratives in small groups and give feedback by noting what they liked and what could be improved.

Grammar:

This week, students will learn about run-on sentences, statements, questions, commands, and exclamations. They will practice identifying and using each sentence type correctly. For example:

• Statement: The dog is sleeping.
• Question: Where is the dog?
• Command: Please feed the dog.
• Exclamation: The dog ran away!
• Run-on sentence: The dog is sleeping he is tired.
• Corrected run-on: The dog is sleeping because he is tired. or The dog is sleeping. He is tired.

Students will also analyze another piece of writing to see how different kinds of sentences are used to make the writing more varied and engaging.

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

This week, students will learn about the FLOSS spelling rule. This rule helps them remember to double the final f, l, or s in one-syllable words that end in a short vowel followed by those letters (like bell, fluff, or pass). We'll also be working with word families that follow similar patterns, including –all, –oll, and –ull. These lessons help students recognize common spelling patterns and become more confident readers and writers.

Heart Words: 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 word is “been.”

Reading:

This week in reading, we will read “The Great Puppy Invasion” as we learn about the comprehension strategies of “Monitor and Clarify” and “Author’s Purpose.” Then we will read the text, “Being a Good Citizen,” as we learn the comprehension strategies of “Summarizing” and “Author’s Purpose.”

Monitor and Clarify: It’s important for readers to check for understanding, or monitor, as they read. If something doesn’t make sense, they need to clarify. This means to try to fix up what they don’t understand.

Author’s Purpose: Authors have a specific reason for writing a text. Identifying the author’s purpose helps readers understand the text and what the author wants the reader to learn. The author’s purpose can be to persuade, inform, or entertain.

Summarize: Informational texts include many important ideas. To make certain readers understand them, they should summarize the text. When summarizing, readers should retell the central idea and relevant details in their own words or paraphrase.

The Great Puppy Invasion by Alastair Heim, illustrated by Kim Smith, is about a town where pets are not allowed. One day, dozens of puppies mysteriously appear, causing confusion and excitement. A young boy named Teddy tries to figure out what to do as the town responds to the unexpected arrival.

Being a Good Citizen by Rachelle Kreisman is a nonfiction text that explains what it means to be a good citizen. It describes ways people can help their communities, follow rules, respect others, and take responsibility for making the world a better place.

Our vocabulary words for these texts are:

• panicked
• ridiculous
• prohibited
• cautiously
• elected
• local
• mock
• compliment

Vocabulary and Language Development
This week, students will learn how to identify and use adjectives to describe nouns. They'll practice using descriptive words to make their speaking and writing more detailed and interesting.

MAPS Testing: Our MAPS test was postponed to this week. Students will now take the Reading MAPS assessment on the morning of Tuesday, August 19. 

Writing: 

This week, students are learning about the steps of the writing process—planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. As they become familiar with each step, they’ll begin using a variety of prewriting strategies to plan their own narrative stories. This will help them organize their thoughts and set a strong foundation before they begin drafting.

Grammar:

This week, students will learn how to identify and use complete simple sentences in both speaking and writing. We will review that a complete sentence has two parts: a subject (who or what the sentence is about) and a predicate (what the subject does). Understanding these parts helps students write clearly and communicate their ideas effectively.