Contractions flipbook

 We studied contractions last week, but created this flipbook as a review this week. My students will never have to wonder about how to spell different contractions again! They're all here in one handy-dandy place!

First we checked out {THIS} previous post from last year when I played the part of a doctor to operate on some contraction patients.  After much laughter, we got down to work.

When we were done, students glued them into their grammar notebooks, along with out other grammar visuals.

Fiction and Nonfiction: Text Features and Genres

Going with our topic in class of fiction and nonfiction text features and genres, Ms. Roach has made a brilliant Power Point! As a class, we went over the PPT and filled out a foldable to put into our notebooks.

 Fiction text features and genres

Nonfiction text features and genres

We made an anchor chart:

Tomorrow we will fill in a Nonfiction 4-square that is Pinterest inspired from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits!

Click {HERE} for a copy of Ms. Roach's Power Point for yourself!

If you download it, please leave a comment about what you think! :)

Congratulations, Team 4!

Today we played a Language Arts Jeopardy game that we found online! You can find the game here!

PLAY GAME!!

Congratulations to Team 4, who won the game with 490 points!

Team 3 came in second place with 480 points!

Day 148- Homophones

Eh, not the wittiest title, but it gets straight to the point. Today we worked on homophones- words that sound the same, but are spelled differently and mean different things.

As always, we started with a book. Today's book was one I had not read before. It's by Tommie De Paola, titled: The Knight and the Dragon. (going along with the royalty theme from last week- Knights save Princesses, so it fits!)

 Such a cute book, and it has a homophone in the title!
Knight- someone who protects the King, and Night- the time when the moon comes out
The two words sound the same, but they are spelled differently and mean different things.

We made a chart of different homophones:

After reading the story, and having a good laugh, we went through the words and created pictures to match.

After using the chart as a reference for a practice worksheet, students created a 4-square and had to write a pair of words in each box, put the words in sentences, and illustrate.

Not too shabby!

Ms. Gillem worked on contractions with her pull-out students today. She was impressed with how much they remembered from their Contraction Surgery lesson!

Yes, those are band-aids used as apostrophes! Cute!

I'll leave you to enjoy this video about homophones!

**Parents- next week is TCAP week! Snacks are needed for next week- enough for 18 students. Please send in juice boxes or bottled water, along with healthy snacks like cheese crackers, apples, or fruit snacks. NO NUTS- we have a students with an allergy.**

Day 147- Lassoing Linking Verbs

We did this lesson yesterday but I didn't get the video uploaded. So, here it is!

We are working our way through our TCAP grid and linking verbs was on our list. Well, we used Cinderella for synonyms, so why not use a Cinderella spin-off for linking verbs?

I love reading this story! It's fun and it requires an accent- just pretend you're from Texas. :) Check it out for yourself! Watch the video below or click {HERE}. Thank-you, Mrs. Jackson, for filming!

 

Now I know you're wondering what this story has to do with linking verbs- it's all in the accent. I still remember my linking verbs even though I learned them in the 4th grade. (Thank you, Mrs. Buhler!) The key to learning them was reciting them the Cowboy Way!

You know my students loved knowing they were learning a 4th grade lesson!

So, I made a chart, it's all color coded. Yes, that's Cowboy Carl lassoing those linking verbs!

You recite the blue words first, then green, purple, and finally red. When you say the words, make sure your voice goes up on the word 'been'. Make sure to say it in a real 'countryfied' way. Then for the red words, say them r-e-a-l slow. Make each word have 3 syllables. :)

After you have the words down, now you need the Cowboy Stance. Hook your thumbs into your pant's belt loops, swagger your legs, cock your hip to the side, them begin to recite the words.

Check out my perfect Cowboy Soldiers!

Mr. Russell heard us down the hall and was jealous of our linking verb knowledge, and I was impressed with his fraction lesson, so he offered a lesson swap for today. This morning we swapped rooms and he taught my students an interactive fractions lesson and I taught his students Cowboy Linking Verbs.

All in all, I think everyone had a rootin'-tootin' good time!

This afternoon Mr. Russell had to leave early and Ms. Leahy left because she was throwing up, so we had a few extra kids in the room for reading groups. That didn't hinder our reading the TCAP prep! It did, however, hinder our our plans for science. No worries- we have time for a Tornado in a Bottle on Monday!

Literacy Centers:

 Word Wall

 Rhyming word mating game

 Buddy reading/ story map

Our Daily Brain

Day 145- Cinderella Synonyms

I do love a good fairy tale, and Cinderella is one of my all-time faves!
It all started when I came across a wonderful blog titled Just Another Day in First Grade. She was offering her Fairy Tales Unit for free, which was for a limited time. I downloaded it, and LOVE it!

We worked on synonyms today and there was a cute worksheet on synonyms in the Fairy Tales packet.

 Cute, huh? Match the shoe to the pillow!
First we had to read the story.

We started by creating a list of things that we 'know' about Cinderella. After reading the story we went back and either fixed what we 'knew' or we checked off what we got right.

Then we reread the story and found some rockin' awesome synonyms.

 I want to point out the second word on the synonym list: handsome. Our synonym is 'fine', but you have to read it with a slant... it's not fine, it's fine! We practiced reading it properly. :)

My students did the best job on their list! I knew we were ready for the worksheet. We read through all the words and I asked the kids to show me what each of the words meant. We were doing really well until we got to this word...

"cool".

When I asked my students to show me cool, most of my students pantomimed shivering, as of they were cold. (as you can see from the shoe at the bottom, 'cold' is the matching synonym) I say most of my students, because there was one student who decided to show the other meaning of the word. Check it out!

 

I might have burst out laughing. OK, I did burst out laughing. I couldn't help it! Points for creativity! I'll make sure to remember this when we talk about multiple meaning words.

After calming down, we finished going over the words and my students worked independently to finish the activity. I'm pleased to report that most of my students earned a 100%! 

In math we worked more on fractions. I remembered to take pictures of our visuals from yesterday.

Nice and bright! Tomorrow  we might get into the fractions manipulatives that the county provided us. We worked on shading in fractions today. My kids were rockin' the shading! Every student that got called to the board got the answer right! I'm feeling confident in my students' abilities for the test on Friday!

In science we watched a BrainPop Jr. on natural resources and discussed the resources found on land and in water. Trees, flowers, rocks and minerals, and water; all resources that are important to us! After natural resources, we talked about natural disasters- specifically, the earthquake in Indonesia. I had an activity planned for my students to simulate an earthquake (idea from Mr. Russell) but my students were too rowdy at the end of the day. Maybe tomorrow. 

No literacy center pictures today- we spent the entire small groups time doing whole group TCAP prep. We got to cross another square off our grid! Consider synonyms mastered!

Day 143- I almost forgot...

... to feed my students!
It's been so long since we've been on a schedule (it was spring break last week) that it took a while to get back into the swing of things. My students were so excited to be back in school they didn't even notice that we were late for lunch. We were so engrossed in our math lesson, it just slipped our minds!

Thank goodness for Ms. Leahy and Ms. Beckett who stopped into the room to ask, "Are you not feeding your kids today?"
No worries! My students were fed, recessed, and back in the classroom to finish math with no complaints.

Monday is Vocabulary day! Here are our new words for the week:
High Frequency words:
baby, edge, enough, garden, only, sharp, together, watched

Vocabulary:
Built- to make something
Chicken- a type of bird
Danger- something bad can happen
Expected- something you know will happen
Feathers- the soft part of a bird, helps birds fly
Gathered- to bring together
Taught- to be shown something
Vacuum cleaner- a machine that cleans the floor

We worked on plural nouns today. I am using a grammar review grid to make sure we cover all the important material before the TCAP test (in just 2 weeks!) I originally made the grid for my second grade class, but I want my students to have an edge next year. :)
We started by crossing off the squares that my students have already mastered. We got to cross out 6 squares today! The other squares will be reviewed methodically until TCAP time.

 

Here are pictures from our plurals activity. I downloaded this activity from another blogger, but I don't have the file on this computer. I looked on my school computer and I have the file, but not where I found it. If this is your activity, just know that my students loved it!

We talked about making words plural, then students had to sort the words and tape them to the board.

Students then wrote the words in their plural form and put them in sentences. Tomorrow we will do another activity from the grammar grid. :)

Literacy center pictures:
Not too many today. It will take a few days to get back into the swing of having our pictures made.

 Word wall- making words from the high frequency word wall

Rhyming word match up

Ms. Leahy found a fun website for review games. Check out Primary Games.com!

Day 98- Similes make me smile!

Words can not express how much my students are enjoying similes!

Today we started whole group reading time by reading our story, EEK! There's a Mouse in the House!, and then one of my soldiers asked, "Mrs. Delk, can we watch another video?

Me- We haven't watched a video today. What are you talking about?
Soldier- No, the one from yesterday! Can we watch about similes again?

Like I'm going to deny my students an opportunity to further their learning! However, instead of watching the one from yesterday, we watched a different video. It's shorter, but it had video clips.

 Today they were better able to pull out the things being compared in the similes! I was much impressed!

So, we made a chart of commonly heard similes. (I found a list online)

I even managed to include a Forrest Gump reference. Not that my children noticed, or course, but I thought it was funny!As a class we turned the similes into full sentences by including a who or a what the sentence was about.

For example:
Me- My sister is as sneaky as a snake.
Soldier- Mrs. Delk, are you for real? Your real sister?
Me- Yes! My younger sister was always trying to get me into trouble and she was sneaky about it.
Soldier- Is she still sneaky?
Me- Probably, but she's not getting me into trouble anymore! :)

To be fair, I did call my sister today and told her that I was going to 'tattle' on her. She said, "That's fine, but let your kids know that we're nice to each other now!"

Not a problem.
 Hey, Soldiers! My sister and I are nice to each other now!! ;)

To practice their new skills, my students were to create sentences from the similes on the chart. Here are some examples of their work.

 Sonic is as fast as lightning. 

I'm sneaky like a snake. 

I'm cool as a cucumber. 

My mom is the pretty as a picture.

Pretty as a picture, sneaky as a snake.

Cool as a cucumber, life is a bowl of cherries.

Lie like a rug, sick as a dog.

Fast as lightning, run like the wind.

(I think you can read these)

The rock is quiet as a church mouse.

Pretty as a picture, a flower is a picture. (you get the idea)

Sick as a dog, my dog is sick.

I am fast as a lightning.

I can ran like a lightning.

My (sister) is sneak.

Ran like the wind.

Cool as cucumber.

Wonderful job, Soldiers!

 

Indoor recess. One of these days we WILL be able to play outside again! (Not tomorrow since it's going to rain all night, but someday!)

Our Daily Brain