It’s week 16 of school for us! Week 16 means we’re continuing Word Family Bootcamp and really diving into blending and decoding CVC words! And now we’re adding some more emphasis to writing words because we’re doing well with blending! We actually do some blending and segmenting during ABC BOOTCAMP but now it will be our focus! I’m pumped to see them apply the knowledge from ABC BOOTCAMP! We are continuing our district-mandated requirements, and our foundational skills curriculum. And this week, we’re kicking off Holidays Around The World in social studies and using our Farm Research Project to write about animals!
Note: This year, my goal is to show you that you can use our TKS resources along with required curriculums and continue to have fun, so you’ll see that happening throughout the school year!
District Guidelines
- We are required to wear masks indoors but not at recess.
- We can have shared supplies and centers while maintaining 3 feet of distance when possible.
- We are keeping our enhanced cleaning procedures (wipe down surfaces throughout the day, steam sanitize the room daily, hand sanitizer/hand washing throughout the day, steam mop the floors daily, etc)
Lesson Plans
As always, you can download our weekly lesson plans by clicking on the image!
You can get our EDITABLE lesson plan template by clicking on the image below:
Word Family BOOTCAMP
After ABC BOOTCAMP, we start Word Family Bootcamp! This is when we take the sounds and letters we learned in ABC BOOTCAMP and begin applying those skills to reading and writing CVC WORDS! Word Family Bootcamp is done a bit differently because we do a word family every 2 days. Day 1 is the circle chart and day 2 is word building and word writing. So we do two-word families a week and Friday we practice blending and writing! I was so proud of my kids in the first week of Word Family Bootcamp! Their decoding/blending skills were great! The writing was good but we definitely have to keep working on those fine motor skills!
We have spent five weeks working on Word Family Bootcamp. Those five weeks focus on the word families for each vowel. Now, we will focus on blending, reading, and writing CVC words.
And yes, Word Family Bootcamp and the entire TKS BOOTCAMP curriculum are aligned to the science of reading. And it has been from day 1 because that’s how I was taught to teach reading so it’s what I’ve always done!
Sight Word 60!
This week we are continuing Sight Word 60! After spending the summer learning more about the science of reading, we are continuing with Sight Word 60. We have always had decoding and encoding (writing) of the words as part of Sight Word 60 so we will continue that and will increase the amount of decoding and writing. We will also use orthographic mapping and we’re changing our order of sight words to align to the 109 most frequent words (even though we do 100 words…). You can learn all the details of how Sight Word 60 works on the linked blog post and you can get everything you need for Sight Word 60 in our Sight Word 60 creation!
Read It Up: The Year At Maple Hill Farm
We are continuing with unit 2 of required curriculum which is all about the farm! This week we are using the text The Year At Maple Hill Farm! We are focusing on how animals change during the seasons and key details to describe the seasons!
This week we are doing:
- notice/wonder chart
- questions/answers
- describe the four seasons
- write/draw about the seasons
- key details for each season
- clothing sort
We are also using our Four Seasons Research Project as part of our study on seasons!
Here are the farm books we’re reading as part of this farm module: (CLICK THE IMAGE TO SEE THE BOOKS ON AMAZON!)
Holidays Around The World
The next week is one of my most favorite of the year because we are continuing to travel the world! We visit different countries to learn about cultures, traditions, customs, and holidays. We get to incorporate the customs of our students and learn about different holidays that are celebrated around the world.
Each day we visit a different country. Students get an airplane ticket for each country they visit! We read a book that is related to that country, learn about the holiday customs and traditions of the country, and create a graphic organizer. Students write in their journals and we do a craft.
This week we are learning about Diwali, Ramadan, and Kwanzaa!
Here are the books we read for Holidays Around The World: (Click the images to see our books on Amazon!)
Math
We also practice adding by putting ornaments on the tree! We also do this same lesson by putting candy on the gingerbread man! We will also do this with cupcakes and candles and we pull this lesson into small groups for students who need additional support!
I write equations on the board. We add ornaments to solve the equations!
These activities follow the same idea as this cupcake lesson.
Mad Science
This week for Mad Science Thursday we are going to peppermint science. We will test a peppermint to see if it will sink or float and we watch a peppermint spread its color in the water! And we will do a peppermint STEM challenge where the kids work in pairs to stack peppermints to see how big they can build their tower!
Foodie Fun Friday
This week our Foodie Fun Friday snack is food for Holidays Around The World!
Holidays Around The World Art Projects
These are the resources we are using in our classroom this week:
SIGHT WORD READER AND POEM FREEBIE!
For more information, check out these posts:
