Story: Old Elm Speaks
Vocab words: assembled, devoured, fetch, forgetting, simmered Spelling pattern: ge, dge, rge, nge Spelling lists can be found in the Rainforest Resources section of the website. Your child’s list of words should be in their RAINFOREST binder. I also highlight their list of words and send them home in their mailbox with Monday’s pre-test. This week our book is a collection of poems about trees/nature. April is National Poetry month and Arbor Day falls on the 26th of this month, so it's a perfect fit! We will be working on learning about poetic devices: alliteration (lines of a poem or sentences where most of the words start with the same sound or letter), onomatopoeia (words that you read like their sound, BANG, ZIP...), similes (comparing 2 things using like or as), repetition (repeating words or phrases), and personification (giving human-like qualities to an object, "the sun smiled down on me"). Students will be using these devices to come up with their own poems next week about birds/spring/nature. We will also learn about some famous poets (Maya Angelou, Shel Silverstein, Langston Hughes, and Jack Prelutsky) and read some poems.
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Story: Miss Rumphius
Vocab words: conservatory, catalogue, bushel, sowing, hollow Spelling pattern: hard and soft letters c & g Spelling lists can be found in the Rainforest Resources section of the website. Your child’s list of words should be in their RAINFOREST binder. I also highlight their list of words and send them home in their mailbox with Monday’s pre-test. Last week we read about a family who plants a Chinese vegetable garden while all of their American neighbors around them are planting flower gardens. The little girl in the story finally learns that their garden is better than a flower garden and the next year the whole neighborhood plants Chinese vegetables and flowers. We also reviewed sequencing (first, next, then, last) as well as problem and solution. This week our story is about about a woman who goes off to do the things she used to talk about with her Grandpa: go off to faraway places, live by the sea, and make the world more beautiful. Miss Rumphius goes to many exotic places and makes friends wherever she goes. One day while riding a camel, she hurts her back and decides it's time to find her place by the sea, so she does. She ends up being sick and staying in bed and when springtime comes she notices all of the seeds she has planted has turned into beautiful flowers (lupines). That is when she realizes she knows how to make the world more beautiful and once she is better she carries seeds with her and scatters them everywhere she goes and the world becomes more beautiful. At the end of the story she is an old lady and she tells her granddaughter the same thing. It's a very cute story and perfect for Earth Day. We will be continuing to read many other stories about Earth Day and doing things to help our planet as well as Earth Day research. Story: The Ugly Vegetables
Vocab words: aroma, blooming, muscles, prickly, scent, trade Spelling pattern: silent letters: gn, kn, wr, mb Spelling lists can be found in the Rainforest Resources section of the website. Your child’s list of words should be in their RAINFOREST binder. I also highlight their list of words and send them home in their mailbox with Monday’s pre-test. Last week we learned about the schwa a sound which makes the “uh” sound. This week we will be reading a realistic fiction story about a Chinese family who plants a Chinese vegetable garden while all of their neighbors plant pretty flower gardens. The little girl in the story is sad that their garden is not as nice as her neighbors. She keeps asking her mom why they are doing things the way they are doing them when their neighbors are doing them differently. Her mom keeps saying because vegetables are better than flowers. When it's time to harvest the vegetables the mom makes a delicious soup from an old Chinese recipe and the entire neighborhood comes over for soup. The next year everyone in the neighborhood plants flowers AND Chinese vegetables. We will be reviewing sequencing and problem and solution. Story: Catching the Moon
Vocab words: gleamed, eagerly, pennant, linger, launched Spelling pattern: schwa a (a makes the short u sound) Spelling lists can be found in the Rainforest Resources section of the website. Your child’s list of words should be in their RAINFOREST binder. I also highlight their list of words and send them home in their mailbox with Monday’s pre-test. This week our story is a biographical one about Marcenia Lyle Stone AKA Toni Stone who grew up to be the first female ever to play professionally in a men’s baseball league (the Negro League). The story is about her childhood in the 1930s and love of baseball and working hard to get to join a baseball camp when she was 10 years old. In the story, to impress the camp scout (who doesn’t want to take girls) Marcenia decides to try to steal home plate. I was explaining to the class what that means and why it’s so hard. After we finished the book I showed them a compilation video clip of 5x ball players have stolen home. We then connected the book to when we learned and read about Rosie Riveter and how during WWII women took over the men’s jobs and also baseball teams. I showed them a 2min clip of the end of the World Series from the movie, A League of Their Own, when Kit is gunning for homeplate and her sister (the catcher of the opposing team) is ready for her and trying to stand her ground to tag her out. The class loved it and wanted to see more so they might ask you about watching it. It’s rated PG. Its a Tom Hanks/Geena Davis movie (also featuring Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell) from 1992 if you’ve never seen it. It’s all about that time in history when the men were off at war and MLB decided to have women play the game to try to fill the stadiums again. We will also be learning about Jackie Robinson this week. Just wanted to let you know. Our skills for this week are Making Connections (text to text, text to self, text to world) and literal/nonliteral language. Story: Me...Jane
Vocab words: society, chimpanzee, pursue, encourage, organization Spelling pattern: variant vowel: oi, oy Spelling lists can be found in the Rainforest Resources section of the website. Your child’s list of words should be in their RAINFOREST binder. I also highlight their list of words and send them home in their mailbox with Monday’s pre-test. This week is a story about Jane Goodall's childhood dream. Her favorite book was Tarzan and she loved the idea of being like Tarzan and Jane and living in the jungles with the monkeys. She vowed that when she grew up she would do that. Monkeys were her favorite as she was given a stuffed monkey when she was a little girl. Jane did grow up to do that. The students also learned that Jane's mother stayed with her out there in the beginning because African officials didn't like the idea of a young woman staying out there alone. Jane studied ape behavior and came to find many commonalities between apes and humans that people did not know existed before her. Story: Rosie Revere, Engineer Vocab words: engineer, inventions, perplexed, sputtered, dispenser Spelling pattern: variant vowel: ow, ou Spelling lists can be found in the Rainforest Resources section of the website. Your child’s list of words should be in their RAINFOREST binder. I also highlight their list of words and send them home in their mailbox with Monday’s pre-test. To kick off our week about Rosie Revere, we started with this photo: This is Rosie Riveter who was a fictional person based on the women who took over the men's jobs while they were fighting the war. She was used on posters and ads all over at that time to inspire women.
In our story for this week, we meet Rosie Revere who is Rosie Riveter's niece. Rosie is also a great inventor, but starts to doubt herself when someone laughs at one of her inventions. Her Great Aunt Rosie, helps her get through it. It's a really cute story and the students learned about the way life was like back then. We will also talk and learn about Amelia Earhart. Story: Each Kindness
Vocab words: brilliant, tattered, rippled, announce, settled Spelling pattern: variant vowel: au, aw Spelling lists can be found in the Rainforest Resources section of the website. Your child’s list of words should be in their RAINFOREST binder. I also highlight their list of words and send them home in their mailbox with Monday’s pre-test. This past week we reviewed various grammar skills (proper nouns, plural nouns, verbs). We also read Henry's Freedom Box about a boy who grows up in slavery and is able to escape to freedom in the end. It's an amazing true story about a man named Henry "Box" Brown. The students were blown away by the story. This week we will be reading a story called Each Kindness. This is a great review of everything we talked about last week during Kindness Week to continue to carry it over. This book is all about bullying and being kind to others. A new girl is not accepted well in the classroom by her classmates and eventually stops coming to school. The teacher takes time to teach her class how to be kind and accepting to others. It teaches how the way we treat others can affect them negatively or positively. We will be having many good discussions to go with this group as it's always good to remind students of the lessons taught through this story. Story: Henry's Freedom Box
Vocab words: beckoned, hummed, arranged, warehouse, swirled Spelling pattern: variant vowel: oo, ui, ew, oe, ue Spelling lists can be found in the Rainforest Resources section of the website. Your child’s list of words should be in their RAINFOREST binder. I also highlight their list of words and send them home in their mailbox with Monday’s pre-test. This week our story is called Henry's Freedom Box. This story is about a boy who has grown up as a slave. His whole family works for a master who is good to them. Henry hopes for freedom, however his master instead gives him to his son. Henry says good-bye to his family to go work/live there. Henry meets a slave girl and they end up getting married and having a family even though they belong to different masters. One day his wife's master sells his wife and children on the slave market. In the blink of an eye, his family is gone. Henry still dreams of freedom. He comes up with a plan to mail himself in a crate to the north where there is freedom. A white man and another friend help him to escape. Henry travels in the crate, even though the crate is tossed about. He then gets to his destination where friends of the white man who helped him are waiting for him and help his start his new life as a free man. To go along with this story we will also read other books to go along with Black History Month. Story: Somebody Loves You Mr. Hatch
Vocab words: fluttered, mysterious, occurred, recovered, wondered Spelling pattern: r-controlled vowels: variant vowel: oo, ou Spelling lists can be found in the Rainforest Resources section of the website. Your child’s list of words should be in their RAINFOREST binder. I also highlight their list of words and send them home in their mailbox with Monday’s pre-test. This week's story is about a quiet man named Mr. Hatch who keeps to himself. Then one day the postman delivers a Valentine present to him and the attached card says "Somebody Loves You." Mr. Hatch can't believe that someone has sent him this gift and it totally turns his day around. He changes into brighter clothes and goes out in the neighborhood interacting with his neighbors who can't believe it. The next day at work he eats with his co-workers, sharing his box of chocolate and telling jokes and stories. He helps the man at the newsstand, the butcher, and ends up having his neighbors over for brownies, lemonade and fun quite often. Then a few months later the postman comes back to say that his boss is upset with him because he delivered the Valentine gift to the wrong house, it wasn't for Mr. Hatch. Mr. Hatch goes back to keeping to himself and his neighbors decide to do something for him to show him that THEY love him. It's a very sweet story and teaches the students that one small act of kindness can turn someone's whole day, or even life, around. We will also be talking about Point of View. Week of 2/4 - 2/8
Story: Looking at Lincoln Vocab words: inaugurated, democracy, abolished, wretched, agony Spelling pattern: r-controlled vowels: er, ir, ur Spelling lists can be found in the Rainforest Resources section of the website. Your child’s list of words should be in their RAINFOREST binder. I also highlight their list of words and send them home in their mailbox with Monday’s pre-test. This week we will read books about our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln to gear up for his birthday and Presidents' Day. Our story for the week is called Looking at Lincoln, which is about a girl who decides to learn all she can about the former President. We will also learn about some of other other Presidents and American symbols. We will also review Proper Nouns. Unfortunately due to only having 1 1/2 days the week of 1/28, we had to skip our story of Akiak. :( So we didn't get to anything that goes along with the story except spelling. |