Purple

Month of April 2013: The purple group has worked on a variety of skills related to reading and writing. They have answered comprehension questions related to short stories, worked on inferencing activities, and compared and contrasted a series of objects. They have also worked on producing complete sentences to answer questions.  In addition, the group was also writing responses to the questions during the comparing and contrasting activity while using complete sentences.  

Weeks of 2/25/2013, 3/4/2013, 3/11/2013, and 3/18/2013: The purple group has worked on reading a story named: The Scarecrows Hat which targeted sequencing of events within a story. The vocabulary within the story was also targeted. The group has also worked on  answering comprehension questions related to simple short stories and using pictures to self-generate their own stories using sequencing vocabulary words (first, then, next, last, etc.). In addition the group has also worked on inferencing activities where they needed to determine what would come next in a series of events and items missing from pictures.  

Weeks of 2/4/2013, 2/11/2013, and 2/18/2013: The purple group has been working on reading a new story named: It's Mine. The students learned that stories can teach us lessons and the important lesson in this story was the importance of sharing with others. Some of the vocabulary words discussed while reading It's Mine were: recognize, selfish, bickering, defiant, desperately, and harmony. Production of grammatically appropriate sentences while using expressive language and writing have also been addressed. In addition classifying a variety of objects based on location, material, etc. has also been targeted. 

Weeks of 1/21/2013 and 1/28/2013: Over the past two weeks, the group has read a story named: Edward the Emu. In the story Edward is unhappy with his life as an emu and travels to various other animal homes in the zoo, however at the end of the story he realizes that being an emu was not so bad. When he returns home he makes a new emu friend Edwina. The group has also worked on learning a variety of complex vocabulary words which were in the story (e.g., mimic, gumption, snarl, detest, amusing) and have worked on self-generating examples of how they could use these words to talk about different events in their lives.

Weeks of 1/7/2013 and 1/14/2013: The purple group has worked on continuing to work on answering a variety of "wh" questions and following directions when participating in activities. In addition they have worked on learning how to discriminate between fiction and non-fiction texts and answered questions related to a sequence of events. 

Weeks of 12/10/2012 and 12/17/2012: Over the past two weeks that purple group has worked on listening to a story and answering questions related to the various skills addressed so far in their reading classrooms this year (prediction, summarization, cause and effect, inferencing, etc.). They have also completed activities related to the vocabulary within each of the stories. On our last group before break we completed a holiday cloze activity where the students were asked to select various holiday vocabulary words from a word bank and use these to complete a sentence.




Weeks of 11/26/2012 and 12/3/2012: The purple group has worked on summarizing and answering "why" questions. They have also focused on making statements and answering  questions using complete and age-appropriate sentences.
 
Weeks of 11/5/2012 and 11/12/2012: The purple group has worked on listening to stories containing no pictures and answering questions to work on visualization. They have also drawn pictures about the events and/or characters that they remembered from a specific story. The group also worked on filling in sentences with target transportation pictures/words. In addition, the group worked on sequencing vocabulary words (e.g., first, then, next, last, etc.) and completing projects where they cut out and glued a variety of pieces to make a sequence and used sequencing cards.

Weeks of 10/22/2012 and 10/29/2012: The purple group has worked on a variety of activities which involve predicting, categorizing, identifying vocabulary, sequencing, and following multi-step directions with embedded concepts. Thank you for practicing the predicting picture scenes that were sent home with your child!

Weeks of 10/8/2012 and 10/15/2012: Over the past two weeks the purple group has continued to work on asking/answering questions, using complete sentences, following directions, and learning new vocabulary words. I'm definitely seeing improvement in each students ability to self-generate questions, so thank you so much for completing the practice work which was sent home!

Week of 10/1/2012:  This week the purple group worked on reading a short story and asking/answering questions.  "Who" and "What" questions were a major area of focus when the students asked the questions to their group members.

Week of 9/24/2012: This week the purple group continued to work on following directions. They also answered questions about a story including identification of the problem and consequence/solution.

Week of 9/17/2012: This week the purple group continued to work on following directions closely related to tasks they would need to complete in the classroom. The group also worked on identifying character, setting, and answering comprehension questions about short stories.

Week of 9/10/2012: This week the purple group worked on following a series of directions in order to provide various objects to and decorate a variety of little bunnies.  The group also worked on answering a variety of "wh" questions and identifying characters and setting during a story.  In addition, sequencing was addressed. 

Week of 9/3/2012:  This week the purple group made story grammar markers (see home page)  in order to assist with reading and listening comprehension. The group members selected symbols they liked to represent character and setting.  A series of short stories was read in order to practice identifying the characters and setting.

Week of 8/27/2012: This week the purple group played a game where they needed to identify the appropriate pronoun to use when listening to a sentence about a picture. Then, after selecting the correct pronoun the students needed to use the pronoun in a sentence.

Week of 8/20/2012: This week the purple group worked on an activity where they illustrated and wrote about their summer vacation. They also listened to a story about summer and answered questions related to story and completed a vocabulary activity with the words from the story.