fall leaf sentences

As we begin to introduce new literacy concepts we must continue to support children in making connections across our learning. In reading workshop we are celebrating how readers read pictures and more words and in writing workshop we are celebrating our ability to use illustrations to teach our audience. We are learning our first sight words and how we can read repeating words in our morning message. All of this work and learning is connected and part of our growth as readers, writers, and literary artists. 

It is important to provide opportunities for students to point and read words and build with words, working with new words in many different ways. 

We have loved watching the changing leaves and talking about the colors we have noticed on our playground and on our Fall hikes. 

As part of this, I introduced the sentence;  I  see  a  red  leaf . 

We read the sentence on the morning message and discussed the children's noticings. We noticed the spaces between words and the dot (period) at the end. We counted how many words and how to use the picture to help read the words, red leaf. 

After reading the sentence together, every child read the sentence again on their own, pointing to and reading the words on a sentence strip. They then cut out the words and put the sentence back in order. They glued the words on their black canvas and used a leaf stamp to show the red leaf. I offered an idea from a student a few years ago; outlining the leaf with black pen. When you outline it helps to make your illustration really stand out and is helpful for our line and tracing practice!

Sentence building offers a hands on learning experience; children are developing their knowledge of sight words as well as their understanding of word order, spacing, and punctuation. Children are practicing their one-to-one correspondence and their cutting and gluing skills.

This was an engaging and joyful experience for a community of builders, leaf enthusiasts, and developing readers!

 

 

 

 

 


Building and representing leaf sentences is now a choice during academic choice. Children can work with the overhead projector in the loft to build our leaf sentence and draw one red leaf using wet erase markers.