Today we began our new novel study of the classic, Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. We completed a shared reading of chapters 1 and 2. We are really working on slowing Piero’s pace as he at times will read quickly and muddle his words together. As we read, we made predictions, analyzed the feelings of the characters, and made inferences. After each chapter, we completed a fill-in-the blank summary using a word bank for further review of the material. Piero scored 24/30 in measured tasks. The challenge level increases with open-ended questions and when he exhibits difficulties, I offer two-choices to aid in his response. We also discussed the pronunciation and meanings of words such as runt, injustice, snout, appetite, and waded. Next, we enjoyed a few more riddles building on skills using inference. Today our clues led us to a wedding and a veterinarian’s office. Lastly, we had fun playing Jeopardy! This review activity tasked Piero with working with articles, pronouns, and the homophones to/too/two. Additionally, our categories included a revisit of analogies, which promote higher-order thinking skills as well as vocabulary connections. Our last category focused on powerful vocabulary words, offering more practice with some of our high-frequency words from Fantastic Mr. Fox as well as some of our suffixes. Piero answered questions on a Jeopardy style game board with 4 categories and 5 questions of increasing difficulty in each category. Several of the questions also incorporated multiple required responses. This is also a very heavily oral-dependent activity as Piero is in control of the tasks. He must choose the category, the value of the question, read the question, and provide a response. Support and assistance in providing revisions and choices are provided as needed. Oral language directed activities: We began with a nice conversation of the character, Captain Marvel adding her to our project. We then had fun with some Would You Rather questions. Piero decided he would rather have control over water instead of fire so that he could make MORE tsunamis. We discussed his misuse of the word “more” and he quickly corrected to the word “less”. I stumped him when I asked if he’d rather meet his favorite celebrity or be on a tv show. He quickly said he’d rather be on a tv show and was able to expand that to a show about soccer. But, when I asked if he’d rather be on a tv show about soccer or meet his favorite soccer player, Messi, he was quite torn!

Piero wrote a story about his experiences at the beach yesterday. When he completed his story, we reviewed and discussed the mistakes. He then wrote questions for me, and we continued a written conversation. I then wrote a present tense sentence for twenty verbs with an irregular past tense form. He wrote a past tense sentence for each of the present tense sentences I wrote. We went over any mistakes.

Today we reviewed chapters 13 – 15 of Fantastic Mr. Fox and then performed a shared reading of the final chapters, 16 – 18. We worked on pacing and strong pronunciation of “jars” and “badger”. Piero scored 13/17 on our activities related to recall, inferring, and predicting. As we read, we discussed pronunciation and meanings of words such as ruined, ravenous, and succulent. Next, we reviewed vocabulary from chapters 7 – 12 with a fun crossword puzzle and fill-in-the blank sentences. We work to see unfamiliar words at least three times to help reinforce acquisition. Lastly, we had fun with some riddles to work on the skill of inference. Piero was given support of two-choices to aid him in answering the clues to determine “Where Am I?”. Oral language directed activities: Today we had a nice discussion of the Marvel character, Doctor Strange. We then wrapped up our session with some work on Piero’s Revolution. Piero verbally provided more of his story. We worked to establish subject-verb agreement with pluralization, eliminate redundancy with pronouns, and stretch his details with prepositions. We are also looking at preposition use with words such as “on” vs. “to”.

I began the session by reviewing an email Piero sent to me. I wrote detailed questions requiring him to answer in English detailed answers. We discussed and reviewed the mistakes in order to make the email clearer and written correctly. I then showed Piero a picture of children at the beach and I asked him ten questions about visiting the beach and he wrote detailed paragraph answers to each question.

Today we began with a review of Fantastic Mr. Fox chapters 10 – 12. We then performed a shared reading of chapters 13 – 15. Modeling of proper pace and fluency was provided. We also focused on the strong English j sound at the beginning of “jar” and medial position in “badger”. These chapters were a little bit longer than over the past few days, so we spent a longer time with literature today. As we read, we discussed the meanings and pronunciation of words such as storehouse, pushcarts, doubt, crumbly, and cider. Piero performed at 12/16 on our summarizing and discussion activities related to the reading. To reinforce vocabulary from our novel, Piero worked through a crossword puzzle for terms from chapters 7 – 9. The puzzle format provides nice support for use of these new terms. We then continued our study of suffixes by adding -ful (full of) to our curriculum. Piero read through a word list of root + ful words such as beautiful and doubtful. He then completed fill-in-the blank sentences using words such as cheerful, scoopful, and armful (with a word bank). He did an awesome job with this activity! Lastly, we worked with making inferences. Our task involved reading a riddle and using our world knowledge, we had to guess “Where Am I?”. Oral language directed activities: Today we had a nice discussion of the Marvel character, the Winter Soldier. Piero laughed when I asked him who he wants to discuss tomorrow as he’s run out of ideas! I made a new suggestion and we laughed at how many Marvel characters there are! We said he’ll be an expert on all of them! We also enjoyed some Would you Rather questions. We both decided that we’d rather have a see-through submarine than a flying magic carpet so we could see the marine life and coral.

Today we began with a review of our reading of Fantastic Mr. Fox chapters 7 – 9. We then completed a shared reading of chapters 10-12. We discussed slowing the pace and working to stop at periods. Modeling was provided as I read. Piero completed chapter summaries and participated in discussion related to recall, inferring, and making predictions throughout our reading, scoring 12/16 on measured tasks. We discussed pronunciation and the meanings of words such as marvelous, murky, plucking, plump, and chaos. We then worked with vocabulary focus words from chapters 1 – 6 in a crossword puzzle and a complete the sentences (with a word bank) activities. Piero was able to produce several nice sentences using some of our words. We discussed how all of our vocabulary focus is helping to build the English words he can use and understand. Lastly, we completed one more activity related to personification. Piero worked to complete sentences (using a word bank) to personify objects. Oral language directed activities: We had fun discussing ice cream as well as Falcon, our Marvel project character for today. We continued with Piero’s Revolution in which most of our corrections focused on verb tense and prepositions.

Piero began the session with writing. He wrote a thank you note to his grandmother for a birthday present. Then he wrote a postcard to his grandmother saying he was in Juno Beach visiting his grandfather. He wrote to tell her what he was doing in Florida. Piero then wrote a short story from an image of a ping pong table. He wrote a story about himself. He was playing an international player in a match. We then reviewed irregular verbs. He was given fifteen sentences where he had to insert the simple past tense of the irregular verbs to complete the sentences.

Today we began our session with a review of Friday’s reading, chapters 4 – 6 of Fantastic Mr. Fox. We then read chapters 7 – 9. After reading each chapter, Piero worked to complete a fill-in-the blank summary. He scored 9/10 on his summary items today. As we read, we discussed pronunciation and meanings for words such as swore, starve, smothered, wafted, weak, and undefeated. To review vocabulary from chapters 1 -3 of our text, Piero did a nice job with a crossword puzzle. We discussed examples of each word as he found their locations in the puzzle. Next, we continued our new study of the figurative language concept of personification. We read examples and discussed the items being described and interpreted the intended meanings. This included items such as “leaves danced” and “car screamed”. To reinforce reading skills, Piero read a passage about The Milky Way. He completed sentences to identify the main idea and six details. While he was given the support of partially written sentences, he was not provided a word bank. Piero did a great job using the text to assist him in completing this task to 100% accuracy. Lastly, we worked with words using the suffix, -less today. Piero read through a word list combining the roots and the suffixes with definitions as well as completed fill-in-the blank sentences using -less words. This was a tricky list including some words such as worthless, effortless, and powerless. Oral language directed activities: Our Marvel project had us discussing the character, War Machine today. We shared information as we completed our slide. Next, we interviewed each other with some fun Would you Rather questions. I learned that Piero would rather be a popular author vs. a popular rock band musician and he’d rather live in a triangle-shaped house than a circle-shaped one! He did a nice job supporting his responses. Finally, we continued on with the Piero’s Revolution story. We looked at possessive pronouns, compared their and there, condensed items (such as “always” instead of “need so much”), and we worked for consistent verb tense and pluralization.

Piero was given ten words and he wrote paragraphs to describe the words. I was able to discuss and correct grammatical mistakes as he progressed through the lesson.

Today we began our session by reading through the chapter summaries for chapters 1- 3 of our new novel, Fantastic Mr. Fox. We then moved on to chapters 4 – 6 of our novel. Piero recalled pronunciation of the word “Mrs.” from our discussion yesterday! He self-corrected the first time he read it and then continued using it correctly throughout. We are working on slowing pace and reading more fluently. He is running quite a few words together. I will really be addressing this more intently moving forward. In our shared reading, modeling of pace, inflection, and prosody are provided at an almost exaggerated level. As we read we discussed vocabulary such as glum, dozed, sobbed, and fright. Piero completed sentences using a word bank, after each chapter to help review the information read. The level of this novel is simpler than our previous study, allowing for more verbal exchange and discussion of the content. Next, we revisited some vocabulary of verbs that we learned last week and practiced using in crossword puzzles this week. Piero inserted these words into sentences using context clues. He scored 8/12 and we used the strategy of skipping the ones he didn’t know to utilize a smaller word bank to help on the trickiest ones. This helped a bit and we will continue to reinforce integration of these words into his lexicon. Additionally, we worked again with cause and effect. Piero read a passage and we worked together to answer three questions related to “what was the cause / effect of” specific events in the story. Lastly, we worked on the figurative language concept of personification, in which we give nonhuman objects the qualities of humans. I was very impressed in Piero’s engagement in this activity. A lot of support and two-choice examples were provided in promoting understanding of this more abstract topic. We worked through 7 examples identifying the items taking on personification and the intention of the act. I then asked Piero if our new book is using personification. He initially said, “no”, but we discussed how we’ve never seen two foxes talking and identified this as personification. Oral language directed activities: We worked together to share information about the character Vision in our Marvel project. We then moved on to Piero’s Revolution. I preempted our discussion with reminders of English building strategies such as reducing redundancy with word repetition, to use pronouns, to use the appropriate pronoun, use verb tense, and reduce use of “a”. Piero did a nice job and gave me information about the secret island where his monsters live. We then evaluated his work for adjustments, particularly focusing on ways to incorporate and use the pronoun “it”.