Wintry Wonder and a Celebrity Visit!

What a blast! While we didn't get to do everything I'd wanted to, we did get a lot done.

First, we read the book and discussed its illustrations and content.

After lunch, I broke the news to them that someone had mixed up all of the events from the story, and that I needed their help to get them back into the right places.

I was surprised at what the kids seemed to enjoy the most. I suppose my surprise was based on the fact that I hadn't originally planned on including it in the lesson. It was a "Then What?" creative activity that chronicled the activities of Peter, the main character of Ezra Jack Keat's The Snowy Day, after his friend in the book had to go home. While they were at activity and lunch, I took some photos of Peter all around the school. When they came back, I uploaded them to my teacher's laptop and created a PowerPoint in about 3 minutes while she transitioned the students from lunch. The result was lots of screaming and smiles. During the time I was presenting, kids kept leaping up from the carpet, running towards the door and peeking through the window to catch a glimpse of the approaching hero.

I had no idea that they would react this way. Something that I had considered menial seemed like the icing on the cake to them...except, that is, for th real icing. When I placed a light package of sugar cookies on the Docu-cam, it was as if I'd ripped open an industrial sized package of delight. By the end of our lesson, they'd all gotten to make their very own snowman face cookie, using white icing for snow, candy corns for noses, and mini M&Ms for eyes and mouths. In order to accommodate a love for candy corns, one student expressed, "You can have two noses!" Others followed suit, and one student presented to me a snowman with noses all around the perimeter of his face.

In all, this was a priceless experience. Seeing them enjoy this activity was worth any preparations and time I spent in creating it for them.

Parts of Speech

Last week, we came to realize that most of our students really had a very poor understanding of the basic parts of speech. So, at home I decided to search for some ideas on helping them to better understand this concept.


Lessons and Activities

Stick-It the Quickest - Students work in teams to be the first in properly identifying the parts of speech on a sticky note

Grammar Court - In this role-playing activity, students distinguish between correct and incorrect grammar usage.

Color-Coded Parts of Speech - Developed by an ESL instructor, these kinesthetic learning activities help students to explore the parts of speech.

Fun with Parts of Speech - In this activity, students work together to create posters about a specific part of speech.

Sentence Auctions - Students work in groups to buy the greatest number of correct sentences.

Fantastic Arts - This creative activity allows students to use nouns as a basis for creating works of art.

Elementary Grammar - An overall look at teaching grammar to elementary students

Brain-E Game: Parts of Speech - This page lists the parts of speech with examples and even includes a delightful little poem to help students remember each part of speech.


Online Games and Digital Tools

Grammar Gorillas - this interactive learning game helps to reinforce student knowledge of the parts of speech.

Grammar Bytes - Although geared towards an older audience, this site can be used to help explore different parts of speech even in the elementary classroom.

Help Me 2 Learn Grammar - This interactive game helps students learn the difference between nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adjectives. Grammar 1 is a free demo version and can be used with the whole class on an electronic whiteboard or other projection method.

Parts of Speech Game - This game is made in PowerPoint and can be adapted by the teacher. It is available free for download. I haven't downloaded it myself, but it's a good idea.

Luck and Lepechauns

At work, the first graders spent much of their day engaged in a leprechaun hunt. Little green footprints trailed from the fish pond garden up to one of the 1st grade classroom doors and out through another. Happy, excited pairs of shamrock-hatted little people roamed throughout the school in search of clues that the leprechaun had left. The were able to use critical thinking skills to help them solve the simple riddle in each clue. At the end of the day, there was a fat pot of gold unearthed from the sand of the playground, its yawning mouth overflowing with shiny gold coins.

Activities like this help kids learn in a way that is meaningful to them. When a learning experience is meaningful, it is memorable, and can lead to higher level thinking. This is the goal of education: not simply to produce people who can score well on tests, but people who think and use this ability to solve problems. Only when we efficiently prepare students for life in the world are we truly achieving what it is we set out to do at the beginning of each new school year.

What's the Matter?

Properties of matter that is. (Kind of cheesy, yes.) I am kind of wrecking my brain in an attempt to provide some stimulating science activities for our 5th graders. But I am grateful for the online tools that I've found:

• Bitesize - This excellent site from the BBC is full of interactive lessons and activities that help students understand the ways of matter. This is where I found the little animation above.
  
• Utah Education Network - This page has a list of free interactive lessons on science (though this does not include anything about the properties of matter).
• Science Storybooks - Free ebooks based on scientific concepts
• Teaching 2.0 - A great resource for professional development. A great look at what's available to teachers.
• Jefferson County Schools Site - I'm not from Jefferson county (in fact I didn't even look to see where it is) but this site has some really excellent resources.
• Space Shuttle Interactive - Though this item is from NOVA (which I honestly do NOT care for anymore), it seems engaging.
• Science Cartoons - For older kids or those who are very advanced in their understanding of science.

I'm sure that there are lots more. And I'll be looking for them.