Making Words

Hello and happy Sunday!!!

I want to tell you today about a sweet activity I do once a week (on Fridays) in my classroom - Making Words!

I first learned about Making Words when I was doing a clinical in a third grade classroom. My cooperating teacher did the activity once a week and I really loved it so I decided to do it in my own classroom!

If you aren't familiar with this situation, here is the scoop. Every student gets a worksheet with 5-6 letters on the top of it in boxes. They cut out the boxes and then I call out words for them to make with their letters! Typically, each week has one or two word families that they're working with. This week I think it was -an and -ack maybe? Anyway, as you can see in the picture, the words start easy - "an", for example. As you move on, they get a little more complicated - beginning blends, digraphs, what have you.

I love this activity for several reasons, and here they are!

1. It gives all of my students a chance to practice decoding, encoding, and reading skills in a low-stress environment. Their affective filter is low, so to speak, because they are doing the activity in a large group and can lean toward a friend if they need a little help.
2. The kids LOVE coming in the front of the room to make the words. As you can see in the picture, I have magnetic letters that I use to have the kids demonstrate the correct spelling.
3. The activity is differentiated in and of itself. The "easier" words are challenging for my low first graders, and the harder words are just right for my second graders. I can call on lower students to show the first few words and I can call on higher students for the last few. Nobody has any idea that I am handpicking the kids for certain words... :)
4. It is great for kinesthetic learners! They get to manipulate the letters on their desks AND on the board if they get called up! It hits visual and auditory as well - the visual learners SEE the letter magnets on the board, and the auditory learners HEAR us spell it together out loud!
5. It touches on vocabulary if they give you some weird words to make!
6. It gives some of my students some MUCH NEEDED cutting practice. That's all I have to say about that......

I bought a book to just print the pages out of. Here is what I have (except I have the first grade version...).

There is probably a new or updated version without a lady in a denim jumper on the front but whatevs. :)

You can also make your own letters and lists of words if you are focusing on a specific word family or spelling pattern for the week.

Yay for Making Words!

What I'm Teaching Wednesday

For a few months now, I have been participating in the What I'm Loving Wednesday because I thought it was a great idea to remember all the positive things that I love! However, I pretty much only loved school things. So today when I saw Playing with Pixie Dust's post with the same title as mine today, I thought that made much more sense!

Also I have not blogged since Sunday because I kept forgetting my camera at school, so this might be on the long side.

I'll start at the top and work my day through the day. :)

First, every morning we have a "morning meeting." I need to learn more about this, so I do the best I can. Over the weekend, I read on Mrs. Jump's blog about her Chit Chat activity that she does every morning to review from the day before. I thought I would give it a shot. My students are seriously obsessed and they think this is a game, which is fine with me. It gives us a chance to review from the day before and to preview new ideas. It helps a little with spelling also! Here is our Chit Chat for today.

In case you would like to know... it eventually read, "Yesterday, we learned about liquids. We know that liquids take the shape of their containers. Today in Math, we will begin shapes. Do you know the names of these shapes?" The kids volunteer answers and help me spell the words. At this point, I write in the blanks to save time but I might release control of that when we get the hang of everything. :)

In science, we are still working on matter. Today we learned about gases, so after we had filled out the appropriate section of Mrs. Bainbridge's matter flippy book, I pulled the giant vocab visit papers out and we relabeled the pictures as solid, liquid, or gas using our new vocabulary!

I am super proud of how quickly they have grasped this material!!! I should have another fun post tomorrow about our science activity. :)

My last set of pictures shows the New Year's activity we did last week! I used the templates I found on Mrs. Lemons' blog. I read Squirrel's New Year's Resolution, which was cute.

As we went through the book, I wrote down all of the animal's resolutions on the easel. When they went to write their own resolutions later, almost half of the kids chose one of the character's resolutions, which was frustrating. In the future, I'll have the kids add more ideas of their OWN resolutions that actually apply to their lives!! The craft still turned out cute though.

What are you teaching this Wednesday??

Science Vocab Visit

The other day, Reagan reminded me of something I learned during my ESL Methods class last term - the vocab visit!

In a vocab visit, you place pictures on magnets on whiteboards (if you happen to have magnetic whiteboards.......... unlike myself) that preview the topic you're about to study. Students have a chance to study the pictures and then write notes, questions, or comments near the pictures. Later, you can use the pictures and comments to add new information to them as you learn new concepts!

This can serve as a pre-assessment and you can use the comments to determine what is going on in their brains.  Also, you can regroup the pictures (with help from the students) as they learn new things as well.

Anyway..... we did this today! We started our matter unit today, which I was anticipating to be a difficult subject, as several of our vocabulary words are mighty abstract. My wonderful amazing cousin Kelley googled and printed 21 pictures generally related to our vocabulary and topics. I gave them 2 minutes to look at them quietly (note to self and to you: 2 minutes is too long!) and then I was going to give them about 3 minutes to write about the pictures but they were so into it that I just let them go for a while!

And here are some highlights of what they wrote:

This was my first model. I wrote "cat" right above the picture (which was an example of a solid). Everyone else felt that they needed to add "cat" for some reason. I did appreciate the two questions though!! And the one answer, haha.

Are these melting?

This really opened up great conversations about our new unit and the students were excited to start learning! I quickly defined each of our vocab words and they seemed to grasp the meanings. It was definitely the highlight of a day that was a little difficult the farther along we went. :)