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. 

 

 

 

the apple orchard (continued)

This week we have continued to connect our experience at Chapin's apple orchard to our growth as writers, readers, and community members.

We started a class teaching book using what we already know about apple orchards before we went on our field trip. Using skills we're developing in our independent work as writers- picturing a topic in our mind and using pictures and words to give information about that one topic- the children drew pictures and added labels for the final two pages of our class teaching book.

Picture our time at Chapin's;

What did we see? 
What did we experience? 
What else can we teach about the apple orchard?

Colbie shared that honey bees are important workers on the orchard. We saw honey bees and we learned about honey bees. What should we draw or write in our teaching books? Honey bees and apple blossoms!

 

 

 

 

 

We have shared information about apples and workers. But, what happens after you pick the apples? What else did we see at the orchard? What other information is important to put in our teaching book? We did a lot of work with the cider press and discussed how we use apples to make different things to drink and eat.

In their writing children used arrows to show how to twist an apple to pick it off a branch- something we learned at the orchard. They used dashed lines to show apples going into the cider press and drew a picture of someone pushing down on the press- making apple cider!

 

 

 

On Tuesday we voted for what we wanted to make with our apples, using the morning message to organize our hopes for apple bread, apple pie, or apple butter. Reading the pictures and the words the children engaged with the morning message by putting their name (written on a sticky note) under their choice. We counted and compared. Apple pie had the most votes, apple butter had the least.

What do you think we need to make apple pie? We shared what we thought we needed to make apple pie. On Wednesday I invited the children to use pictures and beginning sounds to show an ingredient on a sticky note.

The following day (Thursday) we used some of their sticky notes to represent our list of ingredients. We used our list to guide our measuring, mixing, and making of apple pie.

 

 

Making our apple pies!

We checked our list, making sure we had all of the ingredients we needed. We measured and counted. At the end of our process, when asked what symbol we should cut into the top crust, the children excitedly said a heart!

The academics of making apple pie;

reading the morning message (our three choices)
making a choice and taking initiative- engaging with the morning message
writing your name on a sticky note and rereading your choice (vote)
counting and comparing how many
using pictures and words to answer the question, "What do we need (ingredients) to make apple pie?"
using numbers, words, and pictures to check our list of ingredients
using math words; measurement, top (crust that is over the apples) and bottom (crust that is under the apples)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Friday I introduced a new poem with a repeating word (apple) and sight words. We noticed the rhyming words in our poem. We found and circled the repeating word, apple. We read the poem together and brave readers took turns reading the poem to the community; pointing to and reading the words using what they knew about the poem, the pictures, and beginning sounds to guide their reading.