Reading & Rhyming!

Rhyme Bag

We are working hard in class to develop the necessary skills for reading, and rhyming is an important part of the reading process. Rhyming allows children to play with words and makes language fun and engaging. It encourages children to listen to language and notice its sounds. Rhyming also helps children discover word families (e.g. pot, hot, and spot are in the -ot family). Rhyming is such a rich language activity! 

We have a Rhyme Bag that students are taking turns bringing home. Only items that rhyme can be placed inside! This student had fun with us by only showing us her first item, a bat! We all enjoyed guessing what else might be inside (as well as what probably wouldn’t be inside). Look at the rhyming items that filled her bag!

bat, cat & hat

When your child brings the Rhyme Bag home, feel free to not only choose items to place inside, but illustrations, words, or images printed from your computer. All items will be returned. Happy rhyming!

Reading

Each morning the boys and girls are paired up and share their Home Reading books with each other! Then they exchange their book for one at the same level and quietly read the new book. I am able to read individually with 4 to 6 students in this short time, allowing progress to be assessed, feedback to be given, and book levels to be adjusted. What phenomenal readers we are becoming!

For the next few weeks, the books that come home will be basic pattern books. My goal is to build confidence, make the experience of reading enjoyable, and develop reading behaviours! 

Here are a few strategies to support your child as he or she reads:

• Finger-track: Ask your child to follow the words with their finger. Today we used googly-eyed reading buddies to remind us to track!

• Look at the Pictures: The pictures are loaded with information that our beginning readers rely upon. Please never cover the pictures. For example, we can see flowers painted on Froggy's picture!

• Check the First Letter: When stuck on a tricky word, ask your child to say the sound of the first letter. For example, in the picture below, when we check the first letter and see an "h", we know the word cannot be "chicken". Must be "hen"!

We have keen readers and rhymers in our class! 

Rhyming & Writing

Look what this little sweetheart shared with us today ... the items she put in our Rhyme Bag! 

Only things that rhyme may go inside. Ball, doll, and a picture of her sister ... because she is small! To the disappointment of Mrs. Beliveau, there was no "mall". 

Way to go, rhymers!

Each day we have been working on our writing skills. Writers share ideas, and our first few days of writing was focused on drawing detailed pictures to share our ideas. We are gaining confidence and the students are now encouraged to add labels to their drawings.

No, we don't know how to spell all of the words we need. 

No, Mrs. Beliveau isn't going to tell us how to spell every word we need. 

No, we aren't expected to spell each and every word correctly, we're only 6 years old!

However, using our knowledge of sounds, the boys and girls can "stretch out" the sounds in the words they want to write. This means they say the sounds in the word slowly. Students are encouraged to write as many sounds as they hear. 

We've had lots of success! Here are some recent pieces of writing:

"Dirt bike, shed, me"

"beach and lake"

This is a picture of one student's garden.
"blackberries, sunflower, carrot, tomato, onion, raspberries, Lamb's ears"

"The Pokemon Battle"

Writing is about sharing our message clearly and we have taken the first few steps towards becoming strong writers! Encouraging the students to carefully record as many sounds as possible is our focus, not printing every word perfectly. As we learn more spelling words, those will make their way into our writing, too, which will help us progress towards building sentences. 

We rhyme, we write, we're awesome!

Rhyme Time and Sing-a-Long

We are working hard in class to develop the necessary skills for reading, and rhyming is an important part of the reading process. Rhyming allows children to play with words and makes language fun and engaging. It encourages children to listen to language and notice its sounds. Rhyming also helps children discover word families (e.g. hat, mat, bat). Rhyming is such a rich language activity! As a class, we are having fun identifying rhymes and creating rhymes. Take a peek at some of the rhyming activities we have enjoyed together so far this week!

Rhyme Bag

We have two Rhyme Bags that students are taking turns bringing home. Only items that rhyme can be placed inside! One of today’s students had fun with us by only showing us her first item, a cat. We all enjoyed guessing what else might be inside (as well as what probably wouldn’t be inside). Look at the rhyming items that filled her bag!

Mat, bat, cat, rat, hat!

When your child brings the Rhyme Bag home, feel free to not only choose items to place inside, but illustrations, words, or images printed from your computer. All items will be returned. Happy rhyming!

Rhyming BINGO

Rhyming BINGO is so fun it hardly feels like work, but boy, are the children refining their rhyming skills! In partners, the students listen to clues I read aloud that rhyme, and together find the picture/word on their card. The children have been excellent sports, and one student even decided to make his way around the room today to shake the hands of his competitors!

Down by the Bay

This week we have enjoyed Raffi’s Down by the Bay, which is a story as well as a song. The rhymes are very silly and the students have had lots to laugh about as we create new rhyming verses. Below is a clip of Raffi singing Down by the Bay in concert. Can you guess the students’ favourite verse (which, funnily enough, is their teacher’s LEAST favourite verse)?

Stay tuned for our dazzling Down by the Bay class project, to be posted soon!

Sing-a-Long

After lunch today we were surprised by a very special guest, Father Dan! He came from our parish for a special beginning of the year visit to meet all of the students. Father Dan is very talented and shared several songs with us on his guitar. The children couldn’t get close enough to him, and kept scooting up on the mat! Father Dan, you have a gift!

We sang several songs with Father Dan and one of our favourites was Awesome God. Then Father Dan shared a story with us from his Action Bible, a bible written much like a comic book, with bright illustrations and speech bubbles.  We heard the Creation Story and learned that God created us good. Father Dan reminded us that God created us out of love and that He loves us very much.

Tomorrow morning is our first school mass. All parents and guests are welcome to celebrate with us. Mass will begin at approximately 9:30. We look forward to sharing this welcoming mass with Father Dan and our school community!