UFLI Lesson & Story Focus: April 7-11

One of this week's focus on reading & writing is reviewing the last two week's learning one more time of ending spelling patterns, looking at:

• long vcc (vowel, consonant, consonant) words as in -ild, -old, -ind, -olt, -ost
• Yy making the long /i/ sound
• Yy making the long /e/ sound
• -le at the end of a word

Please see the blog posts for more specific information to review these ideas. 

UFLI Story Help March 31-April 4

UFLI Story Help March 24-28 

In this week's text called A Trip to the Jungle, students are looking for all the words that have:

• long vcc (vowel, consonant, consonant) words as in -ild, -old, -ind, -olt, -ost
• Yy making the long /i/ sound
• Yy making the long /e/ sound
• -le at the end of a word

As a tip, try to look for one at a time and aim for about 8 words total. 

Our next focus was introduced this week with r controlled vowels. We have started with ar /ar/ and for the next couple weeks we will be reviewing the different r controlled vowels spelling patterns. 

ar /ar/ 

The /r/ sound is a tricky sound. When we put the /r/ sound after a vowel, it completely changes the way the vowel sounds. It makes what we call an ‘r-controlled’ vowel. The r-controlled vowel ar usually represents the /ar/ sound. This can come in the middle of a word, such as the words bark and part. This can sometimes come at the end of the word, such as car and star. It can also sometimes come at the beginning of a word, such as the words art and arm. 

The sound /ar/ us produced by starting with our jaw dropped and our mouth open almost making the short /o/ sound. Then, we raise the sides of the tongue and partially close our mouth to make the /r/ part of the sound. Your voice is on. 

In this week's text called The Garden, students are looking for all the words that have the /ar/ sound in the words to highlight, followed up illustrating a picture of the story.  

Heart (Irregular) Words of the Week

This week we are reviewing:

• does
• four 
• fourth
• forty
• people

And we are introducing as new words:

• pretty

Fluency Grids

The past couple of week's stories have also come with something new we are going to try called a fluency grid. These are to help students recognize the phonics rule and assist in reading it with accuracy and automaticity. We have created a little game in the classroom with this activity but at home, challenge your young reader to read the word (aim is to decode/read each word within 3 seconds) and then recall it each time they see it within the grid of mixed up, repeated words. A couple minutes of practice is all they need. If they complete this once, see if they can beat their record by timing them a second time for a fun, challenge or even offer up a reward for a little splash of excitement. This is going to be a little bit of a warm up before reading the text that also applies the same skill while building on all the previous skills as well. Each week we are building on the previous week to become more fluent readers so we can focus on what the text is sharing rather than spending all the time decoding the words. 

**If this is too much at home with all the other things you are busy with, we totally understand! We will be using it in the classroom and saving paper to keep them all together in one spot. Thank you in advance if you do give it a whirl as another way to support your little reader based on the Science of Reading.** 

Happy reading!