Bats, Word Work, and Retell Rope

Students took the primary spelling inventory at the beginning of the year.  This assessment comes from Words Their Way.  This program groups students based on their personal word work needs.  Students in my class have been working on their words in a variety of ways.  Below are some more pictures of our word work study activities.

Students using wiki sticks to spell their patterned words.

Students using the Promethean board to work on rhyme patterns.

Students using magnetic letters and magnetic burner covers to spell their patterned words.

This past week we began our unit on nonfiction features.  During shared reading we learned about bats and then used the materials we used during shared reading to learn not only about bats but nonfiction features found in most nonfiction books.  Below are some pictures of our work with bats.

To begin our unit on bats we took a poll on whether we thought bats were creepy or cute?  This cute little graph came from the very talented Cara Carroll over at The First Grade Parade.  Check her out.

Then, we displayed our data and interpreted it.  This again came from Cara Carroll over at The First Grade Parade.

 We have also done a lot of work in the past few weeks on retelling stories using key details in text.  I've created a retell rope that I use with my class to help clue them in on the things I expect when I ask them to retell a story.  Click on the pictures to grab your own copy.  I used clipart of Godilocks and the Three Bears to clue the students in to each part of retelling. 

Retell Rope

Retell Rope