October 25, 2012

Today was a good day!

In skills everyone is working hard to increasing their reading fluency.  For some groups, that means extra reading that's outside the curriculum (extra practice always helps!), and for others it means reading and rereading stories to work on pacing and phrasing.  In addition, the groups all continue to work on learning new sounds and mastering old ones.

The Screaming Mustaches have now covered spellings for long a (ai, ay, a, a_e), long o (o, oa, ow, oe, o_e), long i (i, ie, y), and today they started long u (ue as in cue, u as in unit, and u_e as in mule). 

The Zesty Wombats are working on spellings for long a (ai, ay, a, a_e).

The Organic Squirrels continue to work on digraphs (th, ch, sh, ck, qu).

The Ice Dragons have finished The Mouse and the Motorcycle and are doing some artwork to go along with what they've read and learned.

In writing, the kids worked on their farm journals.  They wrote about learning all about compost, from its origins (rotting vegetables, leaves, and paper products) to its completion (rich dark soil with lots of worms), and how to sift it to ensure that only good quality, completely decomposed compost is used.  They also wrote about raking leaves to put into compost, and using the compost to add to garden beds that they cleared.  They drew beautiful pictures to go along with their sentences.

In social skills we brainstormed more ideas about what makes a good and bad friend.  Then the kids drew pictures and wrote about what makes them a good friend.  This will be a mini-unit in social skills about friendship, making friends, and maintaining friendships. 

Today was a day where the kids worked hard all day.  They were focused and quiet and made a lot of progress on completing their work!