OUR FAMILY Book provides young readers with delightful stories about an athletic, curious, and engaging family. Brightly colored illustrations support the text. Our Family Book is designed for young readers who enjoy learning about families, cultures, sports, and outdoor activities. Our Family book is divided into three sections, each progressively more complex in text and depth of topics. Each section includes a detailed Systematic Instruction component that includes Common Core Standards addressed by the stories, vocabulary, key questions, Cloze sentences, extension activities, and metacognitive questions. High Frequency Words - These vocabulary words are sight words common to the text level. Prior to reading, young readers should be able to recognize and pronounce these words. Target Vocabulary Words are based on the text level, topic, and complexity of the story. Adult readers should introduce these words prior to reading the text. Students should be told to locate the word(s) in the text that looks and sounds like the word from the picture. Key Questions Key questions are developed around the concept of "the matter", "the individual", "the world", and "the intersection" of the three. They are designed to encourage thoughtful, high level, open-ended answers where the reader must consider not only himself, but also his relationship within the larger context of the world. Purposeful design of personality traits and experiences of the characters provide a springboard for this discussion. Cloze Sentences Cloze sentences are based on the key concept or vocabulary from the story. Adults should read the sentence aloud leaving out the highlighted vocabulary word. Young readers should complete the sentence with the missing word. Extension Activities Extension activities include interactive, hands-on, multi-modality activities that require critical thinking skills. They help students generalize the concepts of the stories. Adults should support the completion of the tasks. Metacognitive Discussion Questions Metacognitive discussion questions are consistent throughout the entire series of texts. The questions are designed to expand the readers' thoughts regarding reading and learning in general. Readers should describe what they learned, how they learned it, and why it matters. Thus, although the metacognitive discussion questions are identical in each text, the actual discussion, facilitated by the adult, should be dramatically different each time the child reads a new story.
About the Author: Dr. Kathleen Phillips has been a member of the Special Education faculty at California State University, San Bernardino for the past 15 years. Her areas of expertise include curriculum development and implementation in K-12 classrooms, assessing for assistive technology needs, and working with adult learners. She currently resides in the mountains of Wrightwood, CA with her husband and two children. She enjoys running, hiking, attending sporting events, and traveling with her family. Pamala Khunwongse attended the University of Michigan where she majored in Spanish Language. She enjoys writing children's books, decorating, gardening, hiking with her dogs, and spending time with her husband. She currently lives and works in Reno, NV.