Hello Book Bums families!
August is just around the corner, and we're all starting to think about school starting again. Whether your family is ready to head back to the classroom or savoring some last, relaxing days of summer, this week's newsletter has something for you. We're sharing book recommendations and toys to enrich travel experiences as well as full lesson plans from Dr. Christy to practice phonics at home. Read on for all this and more!
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Word of the Week
convention (kun-ven-shun) noun/person, place, or thing - a way in which something is usually done, especially within a particular activity
Classrooms all have their own culture and atmosphere, but common conventions include waiting your turn to speak and staying seated during lessons.
Literary Calendar
• July 29 is the birthday of author Sharon Creech.
• Creech was born in South Euclid, Ohio and writes award winning books for kids.
• We featured Love That Dog in a previous newsletter for its introduction to poetry.
• Her 1994 novel Walk Two Moons is a Newberry Award winner.
• You can find reading guides to pair with her books here.
From our Bookshelves
Airport by Byron Barton is a delightful book for little readers. Need a gift for a preschooler? Pair Airport with the Playmobil Jet from the City Life collection. After my grandkids returned from a vacation that involved a plane ride, I knew it was the perfect time to share this duo. My grandson is three and he adored his new treasures. We read the book first (his choice), and I asked if it reminded him of his vacation. Having kids recall events helps them to remember their experiences and it enhances their vocabularies, too. (Do you remember waiting to board the plane? Did your flight attendant remind you to buckle your seatbelt?) Next, we assembled his toy jet. We named the parts and recalled their purposes—facts we learned from Airport. .
Tips for Families
At Book Bums, we’ve added our Little Letter Learner curriculum to our one-on-one tutoring curriculum. This means that we can serve kids who are still learning letters and their associated sounds. I’m sharing a lesson, below, so you can learn how we promote an awareness of sounds in words (phonemic awareness); the ways those sounds are represented in print (phonics); tidy, efficient letter formations; and build kids’ background knowledge. You can do these activities with your kids at home, too! I’m sharing a lesson plan, below. Dig in or skip it—depending on the ages of your kids.
Little Letter Learners
j-e-t (display letter cut outs, lowercase)
Welcome/Introductions
ABCs (sing song, pointing to letters on poster)
Vowel Song (sing song, pointing to letters on poster, reviewing the short vowel sounds)
Read Featured book(s)
Jet Plane by David Macaulay
Letter Sounds Instruction
Share pictures/items beginning and ending with j, e, t
Name the initial sound, name pictures, and name initial sound again. It is
often helpful to have kids notice what our mouths are doing when we’re
making theses sounds. Providing a hand mirror can be helpful for kids as they try to match the sounds they’re hearing.
/j/, jet, /j/ (kids repeat)
/e/, elephant, /e/ (kids repeat)
/t/, teeth, /t/ (kids repeat)
Match pictures of other items with same sounds/letter cut outs:
j
beginning- jet, Jello, jelly/jam, jacket, juice, jar
end- (Note: Words don’t end with j, only -dge)
e
beginning- elephant, egg, exit, exercise, engine, elevator
end- (Note: Words rarely end with /e/.)
t
beginning- table, tree, tiger, tractor, turkey, turtle
end- eight, hat, gift, foot, knot, nut
both- tent
Large Motor Activity
Paper airplane (jet) folding and flying
Need:
paper
paperclips
crayons
paper runway (to try to land jets on)
tape on wall or string w/clouds (to try to soar above)
Sweet Treat/Multisensory Activity
Need:
Biscoff cookies
(biscuit + coffee) ß Note the portmanteau—two words combined to make a new word
small apple juice
Handwriting-
j (long), e (small), t (tall)
Need:
pencils
tracing papers
lined handwriting papers (to earn toy plane)
NOTE: Add a star for starting spot on each letter.
Multi-sensory activity
Surprise letter rubbings
Need:
paper cut-out letters: j, e, t
folded papers (each with a letter tucked inside)
crayons
½ sheet paper to do the rubbing
Place letter cut-outs inside a folded piece of copy paper. Student places a half sheet of blank paper on top of the paper that has the mystery letter tucked between the fold. The student does a rubbing to reveal the mystery letters, one at a time, until s/he names the j, e, and t and repeats their associated sounds.
Additional Play-
Make j-, e-, t-shaped runways for toy jets to drive on before take-off. Add a star for starting spot on each letter.
Interactive Play-
chairs set up with aisles like an airplane
Need:
pilot in cockpit
rolling cart with pretend snacks and drinks
child-personalized boarding passes
Have kids practice rolling a carry-on bag and carrying a ticket/phone to board the plane.
Optional Byron Barton books:
Airport
Planes
We’d be happy to share all the printed materials we use for this lesson. Email Christy at [email protected] to receive an email with everything you need!
Tips for Readers and Writers
When teaching second grade, as soon as I was finished explicitly teaching my students to use tidy and efficient letter formations (It took about a week…), I used our “writing time” to teach my students how to write sentences. We noted the sentence essentials and began writing single word sentences, only, on day one. It’s easy to remember conventions (beginning sentences with a capital and ending them with an end mark) when there’s only one word! We used single-word sentences from the book I was reading aloud as mentor sentences, and the rule was, “You can write more than one sentence, but each sentence can only have one word.”
The next day, we wrote two-word sentences. We talked about how most sentences should answer the questions “Who or what?” and “What about it?” We also noted that the “Who or what?” is the subject and the “What about it?” is the predicate. We identified the nouns and verbs in our sentences, and because we had two words, we also addressed spacing/using a finger space between words.
On day three, we wrote sentences with three words. We added an adjective or and adverb. (Wouldn’t life have been easier if we had adverbs and adnouns? Who in the world thought the word adjective would be helpful?!)
I’m sure you get the idea. By beginning with an ultra-manageable assignment, all students realized they could be successful. Bite-sized chunks are inviting and make even the most hesitant writer feel confident they can sufficiently complete the task. The mentor sentences I chose from the book we were enjoying as a class provided models of excellence and inspiration.
If you want to warm your students up for the upcoming school year, you could do this work at home, too.
Of course, we continued until we had some fairly sophisticated sentences including compound sentences. It wasn’t long until our kids were writing paragraphs, then multi-paragraph pieces and then their own books. I was equipping them with conventions all along the way.
Practical Grammar
Short and sweet this week:
The past tense of drown is drowned; drownded is not a word.
Wordology Workshop
• Did you know the Latin root vac means empty?
• You can see the meaning easily in words like evacuate, vacant, and vacuum.
• Vac also mean empty in the word vacation. Can you see the connection?
Just for Fun
Isn’t this the truth?!
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