This week instead of spelling, students are completing several activities to review short vowels.  These activities include partner reading books focusing on short vowel sounds, searching for short vowel words in individual reading books, filling in the missing vowel sound to spell words correctly, reading word families, and manipulating letters to build words.

In addition to working on short vowels, students are also working on grammar skills. They are distinguishing among common, proper, singular, and plural nouns.  As with short vowel words, they are searching for these words in their individual reading books.  Working as a group they also created lists of each of these nouns that relate to our current social studies and science topics.  Writing silly sentences has been a favorite way to practice using nouns and verbs correctly.  Through this activity, students select a noun and verb card and then combine them to make a complete thought.  Students practiced using capitalization and punctuation as they recorded their individual sentences. Expanding our learning, students were introduced adjectives and asked to revisit their sentences, enhancing their writing by adding descriptive words.

First graders are also practicing alphabetical order.  In one activity, students selected from a group of cards, arranged the words in ABC order, and recorded the sentence they created.  Differentiation is possible as cards increase difficulty, requiring students to look beyond the first letters of each word.  Putting sight words in alphabetical order various daily review activities have also helped us to practice this skill.  Next week, we will write our spelling words in ABC order.