Unit 2 · Words and Sentences

Look at this line. ’The cat sat on the mat and you sat too.’ Count the word ’the.’ It is there two times. Count ’and.’ Count ’you.’ These words show up on almost every page.

A word you know the second you see it is a sight word. You do not sound it out. You just know it. The, and, you, is, to, a. Readers see these words so much that they learn them by heart.

Knowing sight words makes you fast. If you stop at ’the’ every time, reading is slow. If you know ’the’ on sight, you zoom right past it. Then you can save your energy for the hard words.

Try to sound out the word ’said.’ S-a-i-d. It should sound like ’sayd.’ But it does not. We say ’sed.’ The word ’said’ breaks the rules. So does ’was.’ So does ’of.’

A word that does not follow the sound rules is a tricky word. You cannot sound it out. You have to learn it by heart. Look at it. Say it. Write it. Then you own it.

Here is a trick. Find the part that plays fair. In ’said,’ the s and the d play fair. Only the middle is odd. Remember the odd part. Then the word is easy.

Read these words: cat, hat, bat, mat, sat. Look at the end of each one. It is ’at’ every time. Only the first letter changes. If you can read ’cat,’ you can read all of them.

Words that share an ending are a word family. The -at family has cat and hat. The -ing family has ring, sing and king. The -ake family has cake, lake and bake.

A word family is a shortcut. Learn one ending. Then swap the first letter. C-at. H-at. B-at. That is three words for the price of one. Families make reading fast.

One dog. Two dogs. Add an s and you get more than one. One cat, two cats. One hat, two hats. The little s at the end means ’more than one.’

Now look at ’jump.’ I jump today. I jumped yesterday. I am jumping right now. The word is the same. Only the ending changes. The ending tells you when it happened.

When you see a long word, look for an ending. Take it off. ’Jumping’ is jump plus ing. ’Wanted’ is want plus ed. Read the small word first. Then add the ending back.

Look at the word ’sunset.’ It looks long. But cover the end. You see ’sun.’ Cover the start. You see ’set.’ Sunset is just sun plus set. Two words, stuck together.

A word made from two smaller words is a compound word. Bedroom is bed plus room. Cupcake is cup plus cake. Rainbow is rain plus bow. You already know both parts.

When you see a long word, look for two words inside. Read the first one. Read the second one. Put them together. Snow plus man. Snowman. Now the long word is easy.

Listen to a robot read. ’The. Dog. Ran. To. The. Park.’ Every word stops. Now listen to a friend read it. ’The dog ran to the park!’ The words flow. That is smooth reading.

Reading with feeling is called expression. If the story says ’Help!’ you say it loud. If a boy is sad, your voice sounds sad. A question goes up at the end. Do you hear it?

Look at the marks. A period means stop for a tiny breath. A question mark means make your voice go up. An exclamation point means say it with big feeling. The marks tell you how to read.

Marcus read his dog book once. It was slow. He read it again. It was better. He read it a third time. Now he did not stop at all. The same book got easier every time.

This is called rereading. Reading a book again is not cheating. It is practice. The first time, you work hard on the words. The next time, the words are already in your head.

Pick a book you like. Read it today. Read it tomorrow. Read it to a pet or a little sister. Each time, you get faster. Each time, you sound better. That is how readers grow.

Read this: ’The cat.’ Something is missing. What did the cat do? Now read this: ’The cat slept.’ Now you know. There is a cat. The cat slept. That is a whole thought.

A sentence is a group of words that tells a whole thought. It tells who or what. It tells what happened. ’Mom laughed.’ Who? Mom. What happened? She laughed. Done.

Some word groups are not sentences. ’Ran fast.’ Who ran? We do not know. ’The big red truck.’ What did it do? Nothing yet. A sentence needs both parts.

Look at this: ’the dog ran’ Something is off. It has no start. It has no stop. Now look: ’The dog ran.’ The big T says ’Start here.’ The dot says ’Stop here.’

A sentence starts with a capital letter. That is the big form of a letter. T, not t. It ends with an end mark. A period is a dot. It is the most common end mark.

There are three end marks. A period (.) ends a plain sentence. A question mark (?) ends a question. An exclamation point (!) ends a sentence with big feeling. Wow! Every sentence needs one.

Look around the room. Desk. Window. Teacher. Book. Each word names something you can see. Now think of places. School. Park. Chicago. Those are names too.

A word that names a person, a place or a thing is a noun. Girl is a noun. Beach is a noun. Apple is a noun. Every sentence has one. ’The bus stopped.’ Bus is the noun.

Find the noun in each sentence. ’My dog barked.’ The noun is dog. ’The rain fell.’ The noun is rain. Ask yourself: what is this sentence about? That word is the noun.

Watch a kid at the park. She runs. She jumps. She climbs. She slides. Each word tells what she does. Runs, jumps, climbs, slides. These are action words.

A word that tells what someone or something does is a verb. ’The frog hops.’ Hops is the verb. ’Dad cooks.’ Cooks is the verb. A sentence needs a verb to happen.

Put a noun and a verb together. Now you have a sentence. Birds fly. Babies cry. Bells ring. Two words each. Each one is a whole thought.

Here is a sentence. ’The dog ran.’ Now here is a better one. ’The big brown dog ran.’ Can you see the dog now? Big tells its size. Brown tells its color.

A word that tells more about a noun is a describing word. Big, small, red, soft, loud, wet. It sits in front of the noun. ’A red ball.’ ’A soft blanket.’ ’A loud truck.’

Describing words help a reader see. ’I ate a cookie’ is fine. ’I ate a warm, gooey cookie’ is better. Pick words that show what you mean. Do not add too many.

Read these two lines. ’You have a dog.’ ’Do you have a dog?’ The first one tells you something. The second one wants to know. Same words, almost. Different job.

A telling sentence gives you news. It ends with a period. ’It is raining.’ An asking sentence wants an answer. It ends with a question mark. ’Is it raining?’

Asking sentences often start with special words. Who, what, where, when, why, how. Do, is, can, are. If you see one of those at the start, get ready for a question mark.

Read this. ’Ate the pizza I.’ It is a mess. All the words are real. But the order is wrong. Now fix it. ’I ate the pizza.’ Same words. Now it makes sense.

Word order is the way the words line up. Most sentences go like this. First, who. Then, what they did. Then, what it was about. ’Mia kicked the ball.’ Who, did what, to what.

When a sentence sounds silly, check the order. Say it out loud. Move the words around. ’Park the to went we.’ Try again. ’We went to the park.’ There it is.

Look at a picture of a girl on a bike. Say what you see. ’The girl rides her bike.’ Say it out loud. Count the words. Five. Now write those five words down.

Leave a space between each word. ’Thegirlridesherbike’ is one long blob. Nobody can read it. ’The girl rides her bike.’ Now each word stands alone. Put a finger between the words.

Check your sentence. Does it start with a capital? Does it end with a mark? Does it tell who and what happened? Are there spaces? If yes, you wrote a good sentence.