This week we will be working with the “Skippy the Kangaroo” strategy and inference. “Skippy the Kangaroo” encourages students to skip over words that they are not able to decode and try to use context clues to figure out the meaning of the text. When students make inferences, they need to read the text carefully and use their background knowledge to understand what the author is saying. For example, if an author writes that it is cloudy and the character is holding an umbrella, students can infer that it will probably rain.

This week students will continue to work on making connections whenever they read or listen to a story. Students should explain how the story reminds them of something else. For example, they can say how the story reminds them of something they have done or experienced, a movie they’ve seen, or another book that they have read. We will also work with the Stretchy the Snake strategy. Students will stretch out the sounds in each work then blend the sounds to read the word. Try to reinforce these strategies at home when reading with your child, to help them put what they learn in the classroom into practice at home.

This week students will review the comprehension skills of summarizing, asking questions, visualizing, and making predictions. We want to ensure that students have a strong understanding of these important skills. After the April break, we will continue to practice these skills as well as learn others. This week we will also introduce the “flippy the dolphin” reading strategy. Students will learn the difference between consonants and vowels then the difference between long and short vowels. The strategy encourages students to read words with a different vowel sound if it does not sound correct the first time they read the word.

Last week we focused on summarizing what we read. Students were encouraged to use their own words to retell what happened in the story. We also focused on the listening lion strategy which asks students to listen to themselves as they read. We are encouraging students to listen and think about whether or not their reading makes sense. If not, students are asked to reread the sentence.