Piero began the session by creating What? Why? and Where? questions to statements that he was given, such as, The boy is studying math. Why is he studying math? Then Piero was given 10 different words and he wrote paragraph descriptions of each of the words.

Today we began our session with our final summary of The Lemonade War. Piero completed missing information in sentences for comprehension and analysis of the last half of chapter 14, scoring 12/14. We then moved on to our new literacy study, Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl. Today we read chapters 1 – 3. We completed a chapter summary after reading each chapter, which involved fill-in-the blanks to support recall, comprehension, and analysis of the text. Piero scored 6/7 on chapters 2 and 3. As we read, we discussed the proper pronunciation and meanings of the words clever, skinny, goons, reeks, swig, and dig. We worked through the pronunciation of Mrs. in which, Piero is inserting a /t/ and/or /r/ sound into the medial portion of the word. Additionally, we worked on a vocabulary review of some verbs we identified in a book from last week. Piero read clues and worked to fit the words into a crossword puzzle. This included words such as prance, scurry, and whine. We discussed each word with examples of common uses. Lastly, we discussed the concept of cause and effect. Piero was unable to verbalize understanding of cause and effect with examples, and we will continue to reinforce this concept. He was able to demonstrate understanding of effects through an activity in which he read a passage about earthquakes and identified 4/6 events that were caused by earthquakes. Oral language directed activities: We enjoyed discussing the character Loki in our Marvel project, working together to share information. Next, we discussed the best way to caption the photo of a squirrel taking a picture of another squirrel holding a snowball! Finally, we continued with Piero’s Revolution. His chapter today was entitled, “The Big Secret” and Piero gave some more information about the monsters. We worked to reduce redundancies with pronouns and insert helping verbs (a common error for him). We also discussed contractions, possessive pronouns, and synonyms.

Piero worked on reviewing the past tense of irregular verbs. I then had him write descriptions of his mother, father, sister, and friend. I then gave him a photo of a ping pong table and had him write a short story of what he thought was taking place.

Piero began the session with a review of the irregular form of verbs we have been studying. He then was given a list of questions requiring the past tense of verbs in the answers he wrote. He was then given a picture of a boy with a surprised look on his face. Piero wrote a short story of what he thought was happening in the story.

We began our session with the summary of our reading the first half of chapter 14 of The Lemonade War from yesterday. Piero scored a 9/12 on this summary which included a review of some new vocabulary from the text. We then read the final few pages of the book. We were happy to see the kids have reconciled and ended their lemonade war! Next, we worked on a vocabulary review of some verbs we met in a book from last week. Piero read clues and worked to fit the words into a crossword puzzle. This included words such as holler, scale, and whack. We also practiced using some of the words in a sentence to help gain understanding of the meaning. We recently introduced suffixes into our study of words. We worked today with the suffix -able. Piero read through a word list of words containing this suffix and then completed a fill-in-the blank activity to complete sentences with a provided word bank. This included more complex words such as punishable, reusable, and disposable. He is relying on the word bank for support, which is allowing him to continue to increase his familiarity with the English language. For this particular suffix, more modeling was needed for pronunciation. Oral language directed activities: We enjoyed talking about the evil supervillain, Ultron for our Marvel character project. Piero shared what he knew about the character and I expanded the information to support our discussion and create our slide. We continued some focus work on the soft /g/ in words such as pigeon, hedgehog, and magic. A lot of modeling and discussion for articulation of this sound was provided. Piero then used each word in a sentence to help practice using it grouped with more English words at a time. Finally, we continued discussing what Planet Ovnis in Piero’s Revolution story looks like. We added details to provide more information than what Piero described as “normal”. We talked a lot about helping me “see” his information. We added information about playgrounds (and what we see there) as well as kids and what they play. We then moved on to the third chapter in which he described the Ovnemos monsters. He provided information orally and I typed it verbatim. We then examined redundancy in phrase and word usage. We also eliminated unnecessary words, particularly the word “a” used throughout. I inquired, modeled, and provided prompting for ways to describe the monsters which yielded some effective information.

This afternoon we kicked off our session with The Lemonade War summary for chapters 12 and 13. This one was a little tricky for Piero and we discussed inserting different words into the blanks to see if it made sense as well as reading the entire sentence to utilize context clues. These questions incorporate not only recall and analysis, but reinforcing vocabulary and using verbs as well. We’ve also added an open-ended question for discussion on the past two summaries and Piero has been able to provide some information for both. We then read the first half of chapter 14. The reading today leant itself to a lot of inferring and discussion about how each character was feeling. We reviewed words from the text (skeptical, shrieking, suit, and rotten) for meaning and pronunciation. Finally, we worked on a vocabulary exercise to reinforce words from several of our word ladders. Piero has practiced these words in a crossword puzzle and we then revisited them today with fill-in-the blank sentences. Support through revisions and repetitions was provided. Oral language directed activities: Today we worked on Piero’s Revolution. We are working through describing the planet he has created. He said it is a “normal planet” and we are generating ideas to provide clearer details as to what “normal” looks like. We enjoyed discussing the character Ant-Man in our Marvel project today and in our Would You Rather, Piero impressed me by adding a few additional sentences to our formulated response!

Piero began the session by writing questions to me and I answered them. I then wrote questions for him to answer. We then reviewed 25 present tense verbs that take an irregular past tense form. He created sentences for the past tense forms. I then presented a silly story and he had to fill in the verbs with irregular past tense forms.

Today we began with our summary review of chapter 11 of The Lemonade War. Piero did a nice job scoring 13/15. We then read chapters 12 and 13. We discussed pronunciation and the meanings of words such as cramped, squealing, dribbling, and jamming. We also inferred items such as, “until their lips turned blue and they couldn’t stop shaking”, why Jessie was feeling sick, and what it meant that Evan’s clothes had been moved. Piero was given support in this discussion through repetitions, revisions, and two-choices. Next, we worked through a crossword puzzle to review vocabulary from Word Ladders 10 and 12. This included words such as toll, lit, ton, and ill. We then began working with suffixes. We focused on -er today which means “someone who”. Piero read a word list which combined root words with the -er suffix along with the meaning. Using a word bank, he scored 16/16 on fill-in-the blank sentences providing the proper word + er suffix. For a grammar activity, Piero worked to convert a short paragraph from present to past tense. Once he caught on to the task, he did well, with extra support given for irregular past tense. Oral language directed tasks: Piero remembered his homework of telling me three things he did over the weekend! We continued our Marvel project by discussing the character Thor today. Piero provided some information, on which I helped expand. We then captioned some animal photos. We added adjectives and prepositions for more detail. Finally, we worked on his fictional story. We discussed ways for him to expand his information by telling what the planet looks like. I prompted him with some questions and modeled information and he intends to brainstorm more independently.

Piero was given an image of a boy chasing his dog with a frisbee. He then wrote a story about what he thought might be happening in the picture. We discussed and corrected any mistakes that occurred as he wrote. When the short story was completed, Piero read the story aloud. I then had him change the tense of each of the verbs in the story to past tense. Many of the verbs took an irregular form for past tense.

Piero studied the past tense of irregular verbs and then created a short story in the past tense using the verbs. He then was shown a photo of a boy at the zoo with giraffes and he created a short story about the photo. I then wrote questions on the paper and he asnwered them.