A Little Lakeside Learning

     Well, I'm back from the lake and I'm refreshed and ready to hit the ground running for the last 10 weeks of school.  I've been thinking about the many, many things I need to get covered in such a short time to get my kiddos ready for first grade and my head is spinning.  I'm really going to focus on literacy to strengthen the skills the kids will need to meet the end of year benchmarks.  A F&P Level D is going to be tough for some of the little ones who started kindergarten with no letter ID - yikes!  I have a group that seems to be stuck at Level B, so I'm going to do some major strategy work to get them over the hump into a Level C.
     If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you know that I've been making a lot of my own emergent readers this year.  It's so hard to find leveled books that have exactly what you're looking for sometimes so I've been creating my own to meet the individual needs of my kids.
     Inspired by my trip to the lake with my dog, Sally, I wrote an emergent reader about it. To support my Level B group, the book has clear picture clues and has a basic text pattern that changes slightly as the book goes on.  It introduces some new sight words (she, went, made) and I think the kids will love reading about Sally ('cause you can bet that they hear about Sally and her antics all the time). 
     I also plan on using the book during Writers' Workshop to model how to stretch your story by including lots of events.  My kids can be a little quick to get to the end when writing and I think this will be a good example of how to paint a better picture for the reader.
     I know your kids won't have the same personal connection to this book that mine have (I put a picture down below if you want to show them the real Sally at the lake.) but I thought you still might be able to use it. There's a large, full-color shared reading version and a smaller, b&w student version. Click on the link below the pictures if you want to download a copy to give it a read.  Have a great night!

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