Noun Neighborhood

As a part of our grammar study of common and proper nouns, the students created a "Noun Neighborhood" during Daily 5. Each day they drew a picture of their favorite store, restaurant, vehicle, and then themselves. After they were completed, they created roads and grass and put them together on blue bulletin board paper. They then added their pictures. I typed labels of all the things they drew. They sorted the labels into common and proper nouns and then added them to the collage.

Empowering Writers

Our student teacher, Ms. Willemin, recently taught a grammar and writing lesson using Empowering Writers. After listening to part of a story, the students diagramed sentences to identify the noun and verb of each sentence as well as what goes at the beginning and ending of each good sentence.

Compound Words

We have been learning about compound words during grammar. As a check of their understanding of the concept, the students created a compound words foldable. They created the foldable by folding a large sheet of construction paper in a stage fold. They then folded the paper in half twice. This resulted in four boxes on each side of the stage fold. They then cut along the folded lines on the top flaps. On the flaps, they wrote the two root words that form the compound word and illustrated their meaning. Under the flaps, they wrote the compound word and illustrated that word's meaning.

Conceptual Sorting

Last week we worked on sorting words into conceptual groups. One of the sorts we did was to identify living and non-living things. This was an extension of a lesson we did at the Nature Center pond. We made a t-chart with two smaller t-charts on it. The students first read the card, decided if it was living or non-living, and then decided if it was singular or plural. After sorting all of the cards, the students identified how to make the word singular or plural, whatever was needed, and we added it to the chart. We then discussed how to make a word a plural.

All I Am

A few weeks ago we read All I Am by Eileen Roe to learn about nouns and verbs. After reading the book we created a t-chart of the things that were nouns and the things that were verbs. The students then created a foldable to write and draw two things that they can be. We then practiced the verbs by acting out things they can do through the game "Monkey See, Monkey Do."

KidBlog Update!

The students have been blogging away! They have written over 250 posts so far. Their latest blog entries are about additive patterns. When they wrote about additive patterns, they first created patterns in Kidspiration which then then exported to our class' shared folder. They then had to import the photo into their blog. Although the steps to export and import seemed tricky at first, the students were up the challenge and were very successful. They have also been using our writing strategies from Write From the Beginning to write personal narratives. They have also been practicing writing sentences using word wall and phonics words as well as using adverbs from our grammar lessons. When you get a few minutes, read their great posts at their KidBlog.