So in the process of recovering from surgery, I seem to be doing an even worse job with blogging. Last week all I posted was the monthly currently. I'm just so tired in the afternoon that I don't feel like doing anything and not having internet at home is not helping things. But I taught a couple of good lessons today and had some good work going on and I thought I would share.
First up is our elf, Jack.
He was hanging from an old projection screen cord with a post it on him. He had written notes on post its and left them all around the room. The kids thought this was really cool. I thought it was really cool, because they were reading the notes themselves. He also seemed to be spying on our reading corner which needed a little spying on. We had to have a mini lesson Monday to remind us about being book lovers not book bullies. When I told my husband this, he laughed for 2 or 3 minutes at the corniness of it. Oh well.
The next great thing was our reading mini lesson before read to self time. We've been talking about tools that readers use. I was having a hard time figuring out how to model this and let them practice as a group. But at about 2:30 the other morning I got a brain storm. I brought out a book that I had that has reading sheets on different holidays. We've been talking about Hanukkah. So I opened this page and then covered different words with post its. Some of the words I covered the whole thing. Others I just covered the last part of the word. I've been trying to get them to focus on getting their mouths ready for the first sound. It worked so well. The kids were word detectives and helped me figure out the words. It gave us the opportunity to talk about using text patterns and prior knowledge. It was great!
The third great thing was our verb lesson. We've been working on present and past tense verbs and I've been ready to pull my hair out over it. But I had seen this pin
It has past and present verbs on the lights. I had plans to make something like ths. But then I thought about how present tense verbs would look pretty cool on a present.
So today we reviewed some more and they gave me verbs. Then turned them into present tense verbs. The wrote them and decorated the word and then we made a present. I think we'll make a past tense verb christmas tree next week.
I've really been trying to get time in so I can work with kids one on one or with a group. I especially need this time in math. I've had math stations set up since last week but today was the first day we got to them.( They are my
Mistletoe Math Workstation. You can check them out here on TPT. ) I tried having a third of the class working on class work, a third working on at a work station and then meeting with a group that needed some reteaching. The reteaching went well but my idea of how to make the thirds work did not. I think tomorrow they will all work on classwork and then when they finish their classwork they can more to their math station. I have about 3 kids that have no idea what we are doing in math unless my assistant and I are right with them. Then I have 2 that are wanting to multiply and are ready for it. I've been thinking a lot about differentiating and hope to have a post on that coming soon. The holidays are upon us and it's been a little crazy around here. I've been back and forth about whether to do a normal unit next week in reading or not. We have somethings we could use some review on and we have several fun activities planned so I'm leaning more towards not. I'm even thinking no homework next week. Not sure though. Do you try to stay as normal as possible as the holidays are approaching?
No comments:
Post a Comment