Transcript

My first grade homework program consists of a variety of literacy activities throughout the week. I don't do a traditional spelling program which involves the students receiving a long list of spelling words where they have to memorize them and then come the end of the week they're tested on those skills. Rather, on Monday for example the students get a short list of words, five words at most, where together as a class we cheer the words and we sing the words, and then at home they go and continue cheering those words at home, and they just practice learning the spelling of those small lists of words. 

On Tuesday they do an activity called making words. And Tuesday mornings I model with them and we participate in the activity as a class together. So the students receive a variety of letters and the letters are able to be manipulated and used to build words as you move the letters around. So, for example, I always have my vowels in red so the students learn right off the bat what are vowels and that every word must have at least one vowel to be a real word. So then a student might come up and build a two letter word, such as as. Then they might take the letters and see if they can make a three letter word with the letters, and the fun part about this activity is that in the end all the letters together make one mystery word, so its quite a challenge for the students to figure out what is that mystery word that we can use all these letters for to complete. 

In the evenings, on Tuesday evenings, they get a work sheet that looks just like this. Patricia Cunningham has a fabulous homework book for the students to take home. So they're able to cut out the letters at home as well, manipulate then on the counters and then also list the words they're able to make and spell using these letters. There's also a note to the parents that guides the parent, or whoever is the homework buddy, it guides them in helping the students with building the words. So it gives them guiding questions to ask the kids as they move around the letters on the table. 

On Wednesdays they're doing word families as their homework, and they use these same word patters for their word families. So /et/, they might make a word family such as let, and get. And then they use the /eat/ word family and they may be listing words like meat, and eat, and treat, and seat. 

On Thursdays they write a complete sentence with each word from Monday focusing in on the capital letters at the beginning of a sentence and the punctuation at the end of a sentence. 

On Fridays the students receive a poem that we've been practicing with all week as part of our shared reading program, and the purpose of that is for them to practice fluency at home. And then at the back of the worksheet there is some comprehension questions they can complete. Most of the homework activities is completed in a little homework book. On the front flap there's just a little reminder to the parents and to the students what the expectation is for each day of the week, and then everything's all together in a little booklet for them. These notebooks are a great place for the students to practice their word work homework in.

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