Analise began the session by asking to reread the story "Ballet Cat', as it was her favorite story out of all the books she's read - so we did just that. She seems to enjoy alternating roles with me, which has proven to be an excellent way to review words and fluency. Today, Analise chose to be the character Sparkles, the mule, and I was Ballet Cat. As the book introduced more challenging words and a few interesting themes, it provided a good opportunity to explore some of the feelings and emotions experienced by the characters and Analise demonstrated a sensitivity to the characters' feelings and was able to make a personal connection and relate it to some situations she's experienced or witnessed in her personal life with her friends at school. Each time the story has been read, Analise has become more appropriately expressive and fluent in her reading, and she has demonstrated greater depth of comprehensive knowledge and expressions of empathy.

Analise was then encouraged to continue reading and to make another selection from the library. She chose a book entitled, "Diary of a Worm, Teacher's Pet". Using this book, Analise was asked to identify rhyming words, long vowel sounds, consonant blends, and contractions. We discussed simple concepts and characters, comparing and contrasting the physical features of the different animals introduced in the book (ie; flies, bees, spiders, worms). This provided a good opportunity to reinforce and consolidate learning gains and transfer skills from the previous session through review of the Venn diagram we created the other day and which Analise had displayed on the classroom wall. We reviewed its purpose and applied prior learning to the novel set of information provided in the new story and verbally compared and contrasted the differences between the physical characteristic sets of the different insects based on our prior knowledge and upon information put forth in the story. Although the story contained actual insects, Analise correctly identified it as fiction and supported her answer. Analise finished the Language Arts session by correctly categorizing her library books into fiction and nonfiction (3 nonfiction and 7 fiction), and reviewing high frequency sight words (want/her/our/once/round/any/could/white/who/where), and a review of consonant blends (wh); Analise was asked to generate her own list of some new 'wh' consonant word blends.
We then moved on to working out of the Mack workbook and a review of contractions, the sounds of consonant digraphs ('sh"), and base words and endings. She completed a few exercises in which she was asked to complete the sentences and predict outcomes by circling the phrases that made the most sense. We concluded the session on page 40 in the Mack Workbook. Analise read the story "Mack Likes Flowers," which helped to review the beginning and long vowel sounds of 'e'. Analise's comprehensive knowledge was assessed by an exercise in which she was asked to circle sentences that described the picture best - and she did so with 100% accuracy. We took a 5 minute break before her Social Studies session was to commence.