Literacy Update

In writer's workshop, we've been writing All About books, which are books that are teaching us and informing us about a specific topic(non-fiction writing). The children have been choosing subjects to write about that they know a lot of facts about. We've also been reading a lot different types of non-fiction books and examining the different features of non-fiction books. We've noticed that many non-fiction books have a table of contents and often have diagrams (labeling) in their illustrations. Some of the children have even tried incorporating diagrams in their own all about books.

When we return from vacation, we will be having a writing celebration where we are hoping to share our All About books with our reading buddies. The children will then begin researching pond animals so that they can write an All About book that they will share with you toward the end of the school year.





During some of our read alouds, we have read the books Pete the Cat I love My White Shoes and Pete the Cat Rocking in My School Shoes by Eric Litwin. The children have loved these books and have actually sung the song, which is part of the book, in music. Ask your child to share the song with you. The children completed an art project to go along with the books. They created their own version of Pete the Cat and got to choose any color shoes for him. Then, they had to assemble a sentence to match the shoes of their Pete the Cat picture.

We are anxiously awaiting the newest arrival of Pete the Cat book, which will be in the beginning of May!

During Literacy Stations, we've been focusing on word families at the ABC station. Learning specific word families (-at, -an, -et, -am, etc.)will help your child recognize word patterns in unfamiliar words they come across in their reading. So far we have focused on the -at and -an families. Ask your child to share some words in each of these families with you.