First Grade Reading: Camping Week

I explained my system of planning reading for my first grader in THIS POST.  I thought I'd try to do a post each week sharing another week of our learning together in reading/language arts in case it helps someone else.  Last week our main guided reading text was Our Camping Trip printed from Reading A-Z.  In addition to reading that book, we did some of the worksheets from Reading A-Z which focused on long /i/ words and contractions, both of which were skills taken from the text.  The worksheets are shown in the photos below.  Note that I added the yellow highlighting on the right worksheet.  Although he is very capable of doing so, I didn't think my son was paying close attention to keeping his letters between the lines, so I highlighted the space and told him to make his letters sit in the "yellow".  This is a great way to help children visualize on papers with lots of lines. 

As a writing activity, I had him brainstorm a list of things he would take on a camping trip and I made up a quick little paper for him in Word using clip-art and a table for organizing his list.

I also checked out the book Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping and read it to him one of the days.  Then we talked about the story elements and he dictated them to me as I filled them in on a story map we had printed from Reading A-Z.

I am finding that I really like planning his reading this way.  It's easy to find other literature and poems that correspond to the topics in the guided reading books and I feel this makes his reading experience more integrated and rich.  Can't wait to share what we're up to with his reading this week.........but you'll have to wait until NEXT week to find out!!