Today we started to talk about words that rhyme with at, such as cat and rat. We are practicing reading and spelling words that are part of this word family. We began with the word ending "at," and added letters to build new words. Tomorrow we will begin Our Word Family books where we will record on the first page the words that rhyme with at. Over the next few weeks, we will work on additional pages for other word families, such as the "ad" and "am" families. Seeing and hearing the patterns in words help the children to better understand how words are made.
We are discussing how words go together to make up sentences. We count how many words are in sentences and how many sounds are in words. This is especially helpful to young writers as they begin to put their thoughts down on paper in Writers' Workshop.
In Readers' Workshop we are learning strategies to use when encountering a "tricky word" in a sentence. We are practicing sounding out words, checking the pictures for clues, and thinking about what word would make sense in this story.
All of these activities are working together to build strong readers and writers. What great progress each child is making!
