One for the Language Learners

I had a moment of panic last night which has now become the motivation for this post.  You see, one of my students last year drew an amazing picture at the end of the year, full of detail and humour and I thought I had downloaded it and so I deleted it off my camera. But then I couldn't find it anywhere on my computer.  Thankfully, my external hard drive saved the day and I can share this gem with the world. 

My students were reflecting on how God had helped them in the past year and this is what this little guy had to say.

Note the towering stack of paper, the rubbish bin full of scrunched up attempts and the one about to hit the trash.  Clearly it was hard work learning to write in Korean! 

This little guy is Italian.  He came into my classroom with no English at all.  He had already begun to learn French so I could communicate with him through that.  I have to say I have never seen a student learn a language like this guy did. 

Compound Word Day

This is what happens to you when you plan a special event, forget and then have to do some last minute scrambling!  Yep, that's right...you spend the day looking like a fool but it's all for the children, I tell you.

So I ran across this fun idea of having a Compound Word Day.  No better way than to start the new year with a little fun, the goal being that everyone would come to school wearing as many compound words as possible.  So on the actual day my mind was elsewhere and I completely forget that I planned to wear my t-shirt with "sunshine" and my "baseball" cap and "earrings".  You know, things that normal people wear!  So when I got to school and remembered I had to improvise.  After consulting a list of compound words, I decided that I could quickly transform myself into a "waterfall" with a "rainbow".  So that's how I ended up spending the day looking like this.

As for my students, they did a much better job of remembering and came up with some fun compound words.

Toothbrush

Sunglasses, headscarf, lipstick, necklace and snowman

backpack, necktie, swimvest 

(not sure about this one but hey, we were all looking crazy together)

bathrobe, butterfly, handbag, baseball, sundress

Compound Word Day was awesome!

Don't be surprised if you see me wearing my super smooth costume again next year!  Ha!

Irresponsible

Who put me in charge of this little piece of blogland anyway?  I've been an utterly irresponsible owner.  I'm not sure it's even possible to catch you up so I'm going to hit the highlights.

In October my students made Synonym Rolls and ate Cinnamon Rolls and I hung weird things on my apartment wall just to prove that I do decorate once in a while (a real highlight, I know!).

My First Graders had an awesome cheer for Spirit Week!

In November, my friend Kathy celebrated her 60th birthday.  We all enjoyed a night at Parc W and an early morning safari.  Kathy is on the left in the blue scarf.  She is an amazing lady.  My life would be minus a whole lot of laughter without her!

We had a praying mantis and a walking stick join us for the safari.  They enjoyed seeing the water buffalo with us which was a first for me!

 It was also the first time I had ever seen a baobab tree with leaves on it.  They were so colorful that it kind of reminded me of fall.

What's not to love about the dawning of a new day?

November saw the return of my students' Kindergarten teacher.  She took time to come in and sing their favorite song from Kindergarten with them and share an awesome book.  They were over the moon!  If they could, I think they would sing this song every day. :)

We also had a staff retreat during the month of November which was a huge blessing to me personally and to many of our staff.  November is also the month of our annual field day but I'm not sure where those pictures have disappeared to.

So I'm off and running trying to catch up. Hopefully, December's highlights will be right around the corner. :)

Squinty-Eyed Smiles & Such

Who doesn't need a squinty-eyed smile and a laugh or two to brighten up their Monday?  

Order up.  One squinty-eyed smile coming your way!

As for the laugh or two - this little guy can provide those.

While we were exploring the geoboard and the many ways we could use it he announced, 

"I'm making a Chinese word."

"What does it say?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said, "but I've seen it on Chinese tv."

So there you go...if anyone knows what "Chinese" word he has made fill us in.

And my favorite quote of the day came from the same kid as he was putting away his phonics book,

"I love this book!" he proclaimed, "It's educating!"
Why yes it is.

At the end of the day we gave this little one a group hug

and said good-bye for now as she and her family go to join their Dad at home for a little while.  We will miss her but we know that it's been hard for them to be separated so we're glad they get to be together again.

A Tailor Made Super Hero

Contractions have been cropping up all over the books my students have been reading.  Without a little direct instruction, First Graders have trouble reading contractions properly so I decided it was time for some lessons on the topic.  There are lots of great free resources out there for contractions but I have to say Captain Apostrophe caught my attention.  You can click on this link and be whisked away to another blog where you can find a great little story about how Captain Apostrophe has the power to join two words by swooping in, knocking out some letters and then flying high and hovering above the new word.  I wasn't in love with the look of Captain Apostrophe so I sought out another image. 

When I came across this one, I was pretty sure he would be a hit with all the boys but particularly Blue Man, my little friend who is desperately in love with the color blue.  So who should appear in Blue Man's writing several days later but....

Dun Dun Dudun....Captain Apostrophe!

 

Did I call that or what?

 

Now clearly, I have got some work to do on how you actually use apostrophes but hey, at least one person is enamored!  Speaking of work to do....

 



 

I should probably teach my writer's how to spell "write" so that we don't have to be "ritting stores" during "Whiters Workshop".  



Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash and other Rhyming Fun

The concept of rhyming seems to be particular difficult for my little English Language Learners this year.  So recently I took a couple of weeks to try to move them in the direction towards grasping the concept and being able to produce rhyming words themselves.  I happened to have on hand Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash in big book form. 

 

And who doesn't love Mrs. McNosh?  She's certainly not a traditionalist when it comes to doing the laundry.  Everything from the laundry to the mail to the turkey is fair game for a good washing.  As stories go this one is great fun with lots of vocabulary and rhyming practice thrown in too.  Here's a little preview of the story done by one of my students. 

 

I love the view of Mrs. McNosh in the top box.  Too cute!

In searching the web, I didn't find many resources out there to go along with this story so I made up a rhyming activity myself.  This is my first attempt ever to attach documents to my blog and my hand drawn pictures pale in comparison to all the cute clipart out there but the kids had fun so maybe yours will too. 

Feel free to print and enjoy the following activity.

For those who might be looking for some ideas for fun ways to practice rhyming with their students, there were two other group activities that we did to practice making rhyming words that are worth mentioning.  Let's call the first one Rhyme Around the Room.  I placed quarter sheets of poster paper around the room with one word at the top.  Groups of students were assigned a paper.  They used the marker and wrote as many rhyming words as they could think of in about 30 seconds.  After 30 seconds were up they moved to a new paper, read the words added by the group before them and then continued adding new words of their own. 

 

We'll call the second game Rhyming Encore.  The students were once again placed in groups and given a white board and marker.  I gave them a word such as "fish" and then the groups had to write down a word that rhymed with "fish."  As soon as they had a word they could share it.  Play continued until a group repeated a word, gave a word that didn't rhyme or wasn't real or couldn't think of any more rhyming words.  At that point, the group with the last valid word got a point.  



Just last Friday I was walking with one of my students at our Track and Field Day, our minds about as far away from the classroom and rhyming as they could be.  This student happens to be one of the ones who has had the most trouble with this concept.  He was playing with words as we walked and suddenly he came across two that rhymed, "Mat and bat - those are rhyming words!" he exclaimed.  Even if he didn't win any races, throw the farthest or jump the longest, that was a moment worth celebrating.  He understands the concept of rhyming!

Exclamation Mark

Never, ever, ever go into Barnes & Noble the day before packing your suitcases!  You are bound to come out with something to make them heavier...especially when you can't resist a good kid's book. 

I definitely couldn't resist Exclamation Mark by Amy Krouse Rosenthal & Tom Lichtenheld.  It is perfect for teaching beginning readers and writers about punctuation marks.  Though it features the exclamation mark as its main character, there's plenty of practice to be had with periods and question marks, too.  And all that practice comes packaged in a great story about embracing the things that make us unique.  Can't wait to put it to good use!  If you have a beginning reader or writer in your life make sure you check it out, too.

 

 

Marvelous Moosetache Monday

Something fun had to be planned for our last Monday to make up for the shocked looks on my students when they came into the classroom and found everything down off the walls and a bare bones classroom as we prepare for a summer paint job.  So Marvelous Moosetache Monday it was!

I discovered this freebie over at Mrs. Lirette's Learning Detectives that capitalizes on the moustache craze and gives students the chance to collect data and craft their own graph while sporting their own "stache."  Then I was cleaning my book bins and ran across Margie Palatini's Moosetache about a moose with an unruly moustache and his attempts to tame it. 

Could there be a more perfect combo? So I ran with it.

Using this template, I created a moustache on a stick for everyone.  We started the morning by selecting our moustache and posing with it.

Then we decided on a question for our graph.  I encouraged them to choose something that had to do with our school year.  So we had questions like "What was your favorite hot lunch?", "What was your favorite recess activity?" and "Who was your favorite teacher?".  Then we went next door and using our moustaches declared in our most sophisticated voices, "I moustache you a question"  followed by our question.  After collecting data from the third graders, we returned to our own room to survey one another and complete our graph.

Later we read Moosestache and I had the children imagine what they would do with their own moustache named after them.  They were braided and twirled, used as wings and blockers in a soccer goal.  Amazing!  As each person revealed their "stache",  I had the rest of the students write describing words on post-it notes which we placed on the person's picture once they were done.  Here's what mine looked like.  I couldn't for the life of me come up with anything for my Bethstache to do but create an old lady hairstyle so I went with it. 

One of my students wrote down "teacherish" as their adjective.  Eeewww!  I hope not! :)

After lunch, we created our own Moose and gave him a moustache that could be styled in anyway imagineable. 

The kids came up with some pretty fun ones.  One of my parents had given me some lollipops so we also created two of these one for ourselves and one to share.

By this time we were almost "moustached" out, but we topped the day off with a moustache shaped cookie.  No better ending to Marvelous Moustache Monday than a few whiskers and some juice to wash them down!

For more activities to go along with Margie Palatini's Moosetache you can go here.

Seeds, Kid Quotes & Rain

We are in the middle of a unit on plants.  We've planted some flower seeds and we are watching them, hoping against hope that they will sprout but we have some overzealous gardeners and I think they may be over watering.  In talking about the different parts of plants, we read the book A Seed is Sleepy.  The illustrations in this book are beautiful!  Not to mention, it fits right in with the work we've been doing with adjectives and it's filled with interesting facts about seeds. 

This particular page led to some funny second grade quotes.

After thinking for a few minutes, one little girl said, "That's really inappropriate."  Another little boy offered, "My sister can sew it some clothes."  Funny, funny little second graders.

Speaking of funny kid moments, you may remember Microwave Man, the little first grader who desperately wanted to use the microwave at the beginning of the school year.  He was back again this week.  I saw him standing in front of the microwave with his fully popped popcorn on a plate.  "You aren't trying to warm that up, are you?" I asked, "because you don't need to."

With a disappointed look he responded, "Well, it says popcorn (on the microwave)!"  Ha...we don't exactly know about microwaveable popcorn around these parts! :)

And now for the rain...

Sitting in my classroom after school yesterday afternoon, I was surprised by the sound of rain on the roof.  I hadn't noticed that the sky had been overcast but when I went out side the rain was definitely coming down.  It was just enough to wet the dry ground and plenty to provide a little time to dance in the rain and start a game of barefoot soccer in the rain.

Adjectives & The Old House

If you've never been exposed to the books of Pamela Duncan Edwards, you are missing out.  She is the queen of alliteration with books like Dinorella and The Worrywarts.  However, the focus of the book we read this past week, The Old House, is not alliteration.  Rather it was chosen as a great way to introduce a study of adjectives.    The house goes from being a rickety, lonely old house to a beautiful house, full of life and love.  My students were fascinated with the transformation.   After reading it, we made a chart using adjectives to describe the old house before and after its renovation.

Then the kids made acrostic poems using adjectives beginning with each letter of their name to describe themselves.  This idea has been floating around pinterest and is definitely not orignial to me but my kids sure had fun with it.  I also gave them the Awesome Adjectives book (a little dictionary of adjectives) from this unit to help them think of words.  Here's the longest name in our class:

She did a great job choosing and thinking of words on her own including the word itchy!  A few weeks back I wrote down a funny quote from her where she proclaimed that she was so hot that her elbows were itchy.  You don't hear that every day! :)

And here's the newest addition to our class. 

She is from Sweden and doesn't speak any English at all. I told her she could do it in Swedish but according to the lady who is interpreting for her there aren't many adjectives in Swedish so she went for English instead.

 

Well, there you have it - we learned a lot about about adjectives and something interesting about the language of the Swedes!

Verbs: Our Action Heros

Recently, I made a new discovery - the wonderful world of Teachers Pay Teachers!  The awesome thing about this site is that there is a ton of free stuff that teachers have created and are willing to share.  Trust me, a teacher can have a whole lot of fun there!  I didn't really venture into buying anything until Leap Day when they had a big sale (maybe 50%) and I figured that it's as close as I'll ever get to a teacher's store out here so, why not? 

After creating our little noun town we moved on to verbs so I bought this little unit on verbs created by The Teacher Wife.  It has a superhero theme which my students definitely enjoyed.  One of my favorite ideas from the unit was to get the kids moving by playing the song Move it! Move it! from Madagascar.  I just turned it on and let them dance, although I think it would have been far more effective if it had been used as suggested with the students moving and freezing when the music went off.  As it was, some of my students showed me their moves and let me tell you, they were interesting!  One child laid on the floor wiggling arms and legs in the air.  Around these parts, we like to call that move the Cockroach.

 Anyway, after talking about the past tense of verbs I had the kids pair up and write a story about how they rescued someone using their "super powers".  They had to underline all the past tense verbs.  We have also been studying the Vikings and the students had all given themselves a nickname based on something they are good at doing - these became their super powers. These stories were highly entertaining!  You can read them here.

I discovered the book Charlie's Superhero Underpants in our library.   Books about underwear are just plain funny when you are in the primary grades. Plus this one has some great verbs in it and so I decided to give it a try. 

After reading the book we made a chart of Charlie's Heroic Actions.  Some of the verbs came directly from the text of the story while others were from what the students saw happening.

The next day after reading the story again I had them divide a paper into fourths and write a sentence in past, present and future tense.

Don't you love the way Charlie is desperately reaching out for his underwear in that last square?  They are blowing away again!

I'm pretty sure that Charlie is winking in the upper right hand corner of this one.  How funny is that!

So there you go - some fun things we've done with verbs!

Noun Town

This is a winning idea for teaching nouns for any First and Second Grade teachers out there.  I ran across it two years ago online somewhere so this is the second year that I've used the Noun Town to teach my students about nouns.  This time around the town was far more developed. 

Here is how the town and the lessons progressed:

Day 1:  Introduction of nouns as people, places or things.  We added places to our town.

How about that school or the pet shop?

Day 2:  Reviewed the definition of nouns and added things into our town.

You have got to love the little frog and his frog house and palm tree.

Day 3:  Reviewed the definition of nouns and added some people into the town. 

Look at the lady swimming! It's my personal favorite! :)

Day 4:  We turned our focus towards plural nouns and discussed nouns that have "s" added on to show more than one.  I let the kids choose anything in the town and make one more of it.

Stoplights.

Day 5:  We discussed nouns that end with  s, sh, ch, or x which when made plural have an -es added on to the end.  We then went back to the town and using little post it notes of different colors we labeled the things that we had more than one of that had s or es endings.

Day 6:  We discussed nouns that have a whole new spelling when they are plural such as mouse and mice.  The kids had also discovered that nouns that end in y need to have the y changed to i before adding es so we went back to the town and labeled anything we found like this with two more colors of post-its.

Day 7:  We talked about nouns that show ownership (eg. the town's mini museum).  Then I gave the students a sentence strip and let them write a sentence using a possessive noun to describe something they saw in the town.

There you have it!  Noun Town!  This group was very creative with opening doors, windows and flaps on the mailboxes.  Can't wait to see what the next one looks like!