In the Pocket

Continuing my work with my fifth grade tutor student, she tends to not only use run on sentences, but she repeats words several times in her writing. I thought to myself, "How can I help her to come up with other words?" So I decided to have her come up with other words instead of me just telling her what to write.

We began with some commonly overused words in writing: big, small, good, fun, happy, and the dreaded said. #SaidIsDead.
We've all read those papers where every time the student wants a character to talk it's "Bob said, then Jeff said, and Bob said" on and on and on and steady as she goes.

I began by cutting out different color construction papers into the shape of pockets, like pants pockets. I intended to use popsicle sticks to write our synonyms on but I couldn't find my popsicle sticks so what do teachers do? Improvise. I cut up the index cards I had on hand. Together we worked one word at a time to come up with synonyms. It actually ended up being pretty difficult at some points. For her coming up with synonyms, for me coming up with questions to prompt appropriate synonyms. Our end results were awesome! I hung our pockets on the wall and they are available for her to use when she is writing.

Next week we start the writing process so we may be able to use the pockets during revisions!

Punctuation Project!

I am working with a fifth grade student for tutoring and I noticed in her writing she could use a bit of a refresher course in punctuation.

I began by making an anchor chart with four basic punctuation marks, period, exclamation point, question mark, and comma.

Each mark had a short phrase addressing what their job is in writing.

After that, we discussed what each one does and came up with examples. I modeled some and let her write some as well. Then I hung it up in our tutoring room!

The finished product is kind of a jumbled mess if you weren't there to see how it was made but my student was very engaged and able to verbalize what each punctuation does as well as come up with examples. She loved being a part of making the poster as opposed to me just making it and telling her what's what.

DAB ON EM

I'm starting a research project with my second graders soon and I was trying to figure out a way to get them excited about it. I've seen those posters that make acronyms out of popular dances like Hit the Quan and Dab On Em so I jumped on board.

Our classroom is Minion themed so I try to incorporate Minions whenever I can. Lucky for me I happened to find a Minion doing the Dab on the internet. #Score

So our research process is as follows

Decide on a topic - Pretty self explanatory, pick what you're going to research

Ask questions - Figure out what things you want to know about your topic

Brainstorm answers to your questions - Make educated guesses and predictions about the answers to your questions. Also take this time to think about where your could find the answers.

Open a book - Look for information in books (a good excuse to get kids into the library as well as show them how we had to research before the internet was as accessible to kids as it is today)

surf the Net - Use the internet to search for answers on reputable websites

Evaluate your answers - Here's the step where we actually start answering the questions we want to know about our topic

Mark notes on paper - Don't forget to write down your answers!

Agent P teaches Pronouns

My students were having a problem remembering what a pronoun is and frankly I couldn't remember what they were off the top of my head when they asked. So I made them an anchor chart starring Perry the Platypus aka Agent P.

As I always tell my students, he may not be perfect but I tried my best. Anyway, I started the poster with the definition of what a pronoun is. We talked about it and I gave a few examples, then had the children come up with some examples and write them on the poster. I thought it'd be more meaningful if they got to help me make it instead of me just listing a bunch of words to them.

Author's Purpose

In a few days I will be taking the students to see Freckleface Strawberry. So the teacher I'm in for asked me to do a lesson on author's purpose using the story. Of course I came back with another anchor chart (Damn Danielle back at it again with the dope anchor charts).

I teach my students that "easy" is a math swear word, but in this case we'll make an exception. To help remember the parts common answers to "Why did the author write this story?" we say "Author's Purpose is Easy as Pie" but then I decided to add "Tea" as well.

So the choices are persuade, inform, entertain or teach also known as PIE with Tea.

After we read the story once to get the gist of it, we went over the choices again. Then we listened to the story again and the students wrote on post it notes which one they thought was the author's purpose and why. Then came up and stuck their post it on their choice.

As you can see most thought the purpose was to teach. However I preset them that there could be more than one right answer and just because the majority were on one choice doesn't mean their answer is wrong and to be confident in what they wrote and thought.

Suffixes

So back to second grade we go. I'm still in for that teacher that broke her foot. I know I'm posting all of these on the same day but that's just because this is the first free minute I've had, they didn't all take place on the same day.

Anyway during one of the stories we read this week the associated skill was suffixes so I made yet another cute chart to talk about suffixes and how they change the meaning of a word.

We talked about how when using a suffix you add it to a base word and it changes the meaning of the original word.

1. Slow + ly = slowly "To do something in a slow way"
2. Hope + ful = hopeful "To be full of hope"
3. Teach + er = teacher "A person who teaches"
4. Tall + er = taller "I am taller than my son" (enforce that it is important to compare to something. I got a lot of "The car is heavier" and "The teacher is taller" ... ok heavier than what? taller than what?)
5. Visit + or = visitor "A person who visits"
6. Child + ish = childish "To be like a child"

Paragraph Organization

While working with a fourth grader I noticed she could work on her paragraph structure and organization. So I again busted out my fancy anchor chart making skills to do the typical hamburger paragraph. I also added some transition words to the side to help remind the students of words they can use to help.

A good paragraph needs:

1. A topic sentence
2. At least 3 good details
3. A good closing sentence
4. and for fourth grade at least 6-8 sentences

Capitalization

During one of my lessons I realized a fourth grader I was working with could use a reminder of when to capitalize letters when writing so I wrote a lesson for her about it. We started with a paragraph I had written, full of purposeful capitalization mistakes. We read the paragraph together, then went through it sentence by sentence. She located each capitalization error, then replaced it with the proper letters using post it notes.

 Some of them were obvious to her, while others were a struggle which brings me into my next lesson but we'll talk about that later. She was able to tell that "I" needed to be capitalized but unable to tell me why besides that it looked funny. She was very engaged however, she even asked if I would write her a new paragraph so we could do it again!

Main Idea and Details

While working with a fourth grader for a graduate school assignment we discussed finding the main idea and details in a story. We talked about why good readers find the main idea. We read the first chapter and a half of Brittany the Basketball Fairy by Daisy Meadows.

We used this fancy anchor chart I made to talk about it. Why do readers find the main idea? How do good readers find the main idea?

After the reading of the story as well as a few comprehension questions. My student filled out this graphic organizer identifying the main idea and 3 details supporting her main idea.

She didn't realize she was supposed to write each detail in one box at first. :-P

Theme Anchor Chart

Yesterday I was helping out with a second grade class. They were doing a writing activity on a story they read that week. One of the questions was "What is the theme of the legend" and a lot of them were answering with the main idea of the story. I ran that by the teacher and she said ok we'll need to go over theme a little more. So I made this cute anchor chart to help define what theme is and give some of the most common themes in kids' stories.

Disclaimer: I did copy this from pinterest so if you've seen one that looks like this... I copied it.

Friendly Letter Writing

This week I worked subbed kindergarten and we began talking about writing friendly letters so I made this fancy dancy anchor chart to begin talking about the parts of a letter.

I know some of the parts are difficult to read but it includes and labels the Date, Greeting, Body, and Closing. I also points to the parts that need to have capital letters and commas. I also took this time to introduce them to the word indent. Throw in some writing vocab.

But I also taught second grade this week

When doing this one the first thing I changed is I realized I forgot to label the Signature as separate from the closing. I again labeled the parts that need capitalization and commas as well as indent. I also wrote out what each part means to help get into the vocab a bit more.

Date- the date the letter was written

Greeting- Usually starts with Dear followed by the recipient's name and a comma

Body - The main message of the letter

Closing- The place to tell who wrote the letter. You can use Sincerely, From, or Love followed by a comma

Signature- The place the writer signs their name

Since this was an example of a thank you note, the parts you see underlines are labeled "opening question" and "the reason you are thanking the person".

Expository Writing: How-To activity

I gave a lesson this week while I was subbing second grad about expository writing. They had a bit of background knowledge about the topic and before we got to this activity we did an activity on the smartboard where each child moved a picture into the its sequential spot such as the steps to build a snowman or the steps to plant a flower or bake a pie. They also talked about the reason they put each picture in each spot to practice explaining their reasoning. I then showed the students and achor chart of a how to that I did on brushing teeth.

We also talked about using sequence words (first, then, next, last or finally), The next step was having all the student write on a post it note something they knew how to do and could explain in four steps.

Which I then transferred to another chart so they could see all of their ideas better,

They then wrote their steps to whatever their skill was on lined paper. After we edited and revised it together, they wrote a neater copy on a worksheet and drew colored pictures to accompany their steps.

I didn't get to the next step before it was time for the regular teacher to return but the intended next step was to turn their steps into a small book. I made a sample from my skill of brushing teeth.

There you have it!