Reading and Writing

Hello everyone!

Today you will see your student bringing home a small packet of work from our morning “literacy” time.  This is independent work that represents much thinking.

Although we tend to define literacy as reading and writing in our culture, literacy consists of seven psychological processes: reading, writing, thinking, speaking, listening, viewing, and calculating.  Most facets of adulthood and life-long learning consist of being able in effectively engage in all of these processes.  In addition, reading and writing are highly interconnected; one is reading while writing; those who can write a word independently can also read it. So, the more writing we can overlap with reading, the faster students learn to do both.

During our morning literacy hour, the students are engaging in most of the psychological processes of literacy.  Every day they will read, both teacher selected and self-selected texts. 

On Monday, we engage in shared (interactive) reading of a text where we make predictions, learn expanded concept vocabulary, and think about author intent (just to name a few).  We also will read and learn a poem each week.  These two whole class learnings become two of the four learning activities your child will complete each week as they rotate through literacy centers.  One day, they will respond to the poem, and locate key words within the poem; another day they will engage with the story of the week (such as identifying problem/solution); another day they will engage with non-fiction texts, (such as a Scholastic News or other content book); and one day they will observe science artifacts or works of art then write about them.  They will also be reading many different books during this time.  All of this work is independent – so it may not be absolutely perfect – but we do expect the best from each child.  Also during this time, your child will receive small group instruction in reading at their rate and level to help target in on their needs as a learner.  The goal is to meet 3-4 times a week in small group.  With this model, your child will engage with a variety of texts, receive small group instruction, and increase their stamina in both reading and writing. We also have a 30 minute quiet reading time in the afternoon.

We also have buddy reading time with third grade! Take a peek:

So much learning is happening in first grade – thanks for all of the support from home!