***You do NOT have to take any of my other classes to take this one! :) If your child knows all letters and sounds, several sight words, and is doing well with reading and writing simple sentences (sentences that include sight words and other simple words, such as "hat, cup, fan, lamp, stand, grab, book, road, sing, bike," and other similar word patterns), this class may be a great fit! Our goal in this class is to move from reading and writing one complete sentence to reading and writing simple, short stories (2-3+ sentences). 

At the beginning of each class, we will learn about nouns, verbs, and adjectives.  We'll practice what these words mean through song and dance (for whoever wants to join me in singing and showing off their dance moves)!  We will do our guided reading practice first, through a silly story (lots of laughs here!). We will create a silly story together (students will not know the entire story until we read it), learn our "tricky sound(s)" for the day, and work through our story together as we use sight words, sounds, and strategies we know to decode/read each word along the way. We will learn and practice how to decode longer, trickier words and strategies to use for those. Students will find out what our silly story is about as we read together!

Finally, our class will end with guided writing. We will practice correct sentence structure (starts with a capital, ends with punctuation, spaces between words), apply our tricky sound/spelling strategy when appropriate, discuss reading/writing/spelling strategies as they arise in our sentences, and work to write complete sentences together that will form a short story. Our goal is to write at least one or two sentences together (as much as time allows) and take this story with us to finish independently after class! 

This class is student-led at times as we create our silly stories and sentences together, which gives me the opportunity to be flexible as a teacher and teach/review different sight words and strategies as we encounter them.  Join me as we work on our beginning reading and writing skills, create sentences/stories together, and, just maybe, get a little (or very) silly!

>>>When writing, I will guide students through sounding out each word and using the spelling strategies and tricky sounds we are working on to help guide us. I will guide students through spelling phonetically [writing the letter(s) for each sound heard in the word], when appropriate, to instruct them on how to work through a word independently (when a teacher/grown-up is not there to to tell them the correct spelling). I will always teach correct spelling of words used in our sentences that we create together, but I also make sure to guide students through the phonetic spelling, in order to better prepare and encourage them for independent writing! That way, when your learner wants to write a word independently and does not know that word’s spelling, they can use phonetic spelling [identifying each sound in a word and applying the correct letter(s) that match that sound] to write it. As long as it includes every sound, and we can read it, they will have successfully written independently.  We are encouraging confident and independent writers! (An example of this would be if your learner wrote "casl" for "castle" or "cheetu" for "cheetah" when writing independently and not knowing the correct spelling on their own.)

We will be learning/practicing the following "tricky sounds" in our silly stories:

By Topic:

Week 1: soft c
Week 2: words ending with ke/ck
Week 3: double consonants/ing
Week 4: double consonants/ed
Week 5: double consonants/ing/ed
Week 6: double consonants/y at the end
Week 7: Bossy r
Week 8: Boss r
Week 9: Bossy r (ir, ur, er    vs.     /r/)
Week 10: double consonants
Week 11: es
Week 12: contractions
Week 13: contractions 
Week 14: contractions/tr & dr

By Date-Fall 2024:
Week of August 25: soft c
Week of September 1st: Week 1
Week of September 8th: Week 2
Week of September 15th: Week 3
Week of September 22nd: Week 4
Week of September 29th: Week 5
Week of October 6th: Week 6
Week of October 13th: Week 7
Week of October 20th: Week 8
Week of October 27th: Week 9
Week of November 3rd: Week 10
Week of November 10th: Week 11
Week of November 17th: Week 12
Week of November 24th: NO CLASS- Happy Thanksgiving!
Week of December 1st: Week 13
Week of December 8th: Week 14
Week of December 15th: NO CLASS-Holiday Break!
Week of December 22nd: NO CLASS-Holiday Break!
Week of December 29th: NO CLASS-Holiday Break!



*More dates/lessons may be added and listed here as the weeks progress!