Summaries, Diphthongs, and Acrostic Poems

Happy Friday!!!

This week was crazy! A third child withdrew from school. Three of my kiddos have moved since Christmas. On top of that, three were absent yesterday and three were out today. After lunch another kiddie went home with a fever. We're dropping like flies! I'm NOT complaining about the student-to-teacher-ratio, I'm just saying...

Anyway, this week we were focused on vowel dipthongs, summarizing, and poetry during our reading block. Here's how it all went down. I found this big book in the library:

I chose this book because it is a poem, and it had examples of the vowel dipthongs that we are focused on this week (and for the next two weeks too). There isn't much text per page, but the text is rich with all kinds of blends, diagraphs, diphthongs, and more. 

Just these four words contain a vowel diphthong (oo), a L-blend (fl), a S-blend (sc), a silent e, and rhyme. Whatever your working on is probably in there!

We picked out words in our big book that contained vowel dipthongs and wrote them on sticky notes.

Then we also did some dipthong work at the beginning of guided reading groups. 

This worksheet contains OW words. Color words that sound like COW red and words that sound like BLOW blue. We did not complete the entire worksheet during guided reading. I just got them started to make sure everyone understood the directions and knew what to do. It is part of my Vowel Diphthongs Word Detective Packet:

Be a Word Detective: Vowel Diphthongs

After practicing our reading strategies, we found words with diphthongs in our guided reading books.

Next week, we will probably look for dipthongs during Read to Self one day and I've got another big book full of diphthongs. I think it is called Beetle Bop. We will also work on some more of my Word Detective packet. 

This week during interactive read-aloud we were focused on summaries. We learned that good readers use information they learn to create a summary, and that a summary pulls together info we learn about a topic so we can share it with others. We read a book called Eruption! and recorded important information on our anchor chart.

 Actually, we didn't read the entire book. One day we read about how volcanoes are formed and lava. The next day, we read about different types of volcanoes and ash. Finally, we used our listening, thinking, and writing skills to write a summary. 

Today I decided a little craftivity was in order, so students copied the summary and then topped off their work off with a paper volcano. 

If you're a Texas teacher you know that next week is STAAR testing. If not, the acronym stands for State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness. My class adopted a 5th grade class and made them a poster to show them a little support. We will deliver the poster on Monday. Testing begins Tuesday for 5th grade. 

The books in the pic are just holding down the poster. My firsties love Pharrel Williams' Happy. On YouTube there is a video with the minions from Despicable Me dancing to the song. I tried to play off that. It's hard to see in this picture, but I attempted to draw a disco dance floor and a mirror ball using colored chalk. 

This week we also started learning about poetry. We made an anchor chart detailing our schema about poetry and we are adding our new schema as we read more poetry everyday. This week during Work on Writing, we practiced writing acrostic poems. Most of our attempts were spring themed, but we also wrote an acrostic name poem. This is what the kids helped me write:

Here are the poems a couple of kids that understood that they were the subject of the poem: 

This student likes racing games, is active, loves to yo-yo, prefers hot weather, enjoys the Aflac commerical, and wants to join the navy.

This student loves her mom, her dog likes her, enjoys running, loves dogs, and has dark eyes. Many students lost sight of the subject after the first few letters of their name. Well, they couldn't think of anything about themselves that started with that letter, so they just wrote something else that begin with the letter. We'll get better ;-)

Are you going? I am! So excited. 

Your turn...link up!

Five for Friday

A side of writing with my interactive reading, please!

Long time, no see. I've been having a blast in first grade, but I've been too busy to blog about it!

This year one of our campus goals is to write more, m o r e, MORE by incorporating writing in all subjects. I have a designated interactive writing & writer's workshop time, plus Daily Five has the Work on Writing component so I routinely get in writing multiple times during my reading/language arts block. On top of that, I've been getting in a little extra writing on Fridays during interactive reading time and a craftivity too :-) For example, a couple of weeks ago, during interactive reading, we focused on finding the problem and solution in all of our stories. We read The Three Little Pigs and The Big Bad Wolf is Good. On Friday, we wrote about Wolf's problem and solution and then made a Wolf craftivity to accompany our writing.

I'm pretty good at looking at an illustration and sketching out a pretty close likeness, so I draw a template and cut it out. Then, I trace it a few times and cut it out in stacks of 5-10. I think I only cut the wolf three times - my template and then two stacks of ten. Stacks of construction paper can be cut easily with heavy duty scissors. I precut all of the pieces to save time. Otherwise, we would use up an hour of our day cutting out all these pieces. No bueno!

This is what we wrote:
Problem: Wolf does not have any friends.
Solution: He decides to be kind, be useful, and do a noble deed.

In this case we used what we had already discussed and written on our anchor chart, so the kiddos just copied the sentences. But sometimes, I come up with a sentence starter and the students must complete the sentence on their own.

Next, using my document camera and a guided craftivity kinda method, I walk the class through the steps of drawing and glueing the pieces onto to the paper in the correct order. The kids looooove the craftivity, plus we get in a little extra writing too! I always make sure a student has completed the writing component before they start on the craftivity. If a student wastes time then the writing gets done, but not the craftivity. This is an incentive to stay on task.

This week we are working on text to text connections. We are reading several versions of Cinderella. You've got to see my Dinorella craftivity. Soooo cute! I'll take pics after we make them on Friday.

Have a great week,