Celebrating Chinese New Year with Word Work Activities

I just wanted to post a quick line to let you know I updated my Chinese New Year ELA pack to represent 2015 and The Year of the Sheep.  I won't be doing a ton of activities with Chinese New Year this year because it falls right around Mardi Gras and well.. living in the mecca of Mardi Gras I need to put in some serious time celebrating a new culture.  BUT I don't want to forget about teaching my students a little about Chinese traditions so I'm going to use my ELA pack as my Word Work review in Febrauary.

Included in my ELA is a Cloze Reading activity for students to practice fluency.  I also have the passage set up as a Close Reading Activity with comprehension activity.  There are several sets of Word Work Task Cards that include practice with Homophones, Pronouns, Sentence Combining, and Synonym vocabulary.  These will be a good way to get in a little extra practice

If you are looking for a way to get in a little word work practice and teach your students about Chinese New Year, my pack may be the asnwer for you.

0

Two for Tuesday: 6/24- Stop! Grammar Time

It's Two for TUESDAY!  YAY!  I have gotten so many great deals from this linky!  My smarties are going to LOVE the school year next year.  I'm linking up with The Teaching Tribune and offering two of my grammar/word work products at 50% off for today!

The first is my Greek and Latin Roots Packet.  This was awesome because I focused on Greek and Latin root words when I was teaching Ancient Greece and Rome, go figure a little cross-curricular activities!  I love the clipart because it was pretty authentic, and we used the root words as I was teaching a social studies DBQ as well.  It was pretty cool to see my smarties searching out which roots were Greek versus Latin and who could use the most and still make a cohesive story.

The second product I'm offering is my Vocabulary Word Wise Analogies.  This is a set of 16 word cards to help your students make word connections.  The pack is differentiated, so you can pull out the more difficult cards as needed.  Two printable worksheets are also included for further practice.

As always, feedback is appreciated.  Stop by The Teaching Tribune and check out what other friends have linked!

1

Tried it Tuesday: Mentor Sentences in Middle School

Today I'm linking up with Holly to share something I've been dabbling in the past two week with my smarties:  Mentor Sentences.  Jessica Ivey over at Ideas by Jivey has been such a great help in this area. She answered a million questions for me when I got started.  Good thing she is one of my BBBs or I'm sure she would be tired of me!

Jessica has a great product for upper elementary students on Mentor Sentences, but I needed a little bit more complex text.  I decided to use my read aloud:  The Watson's Go to Birmingham and take text sentences from there.  My students are really pretty decent about being able to produce the parts of a sentence, so I am focusing more on using them to review and teach figurative language.

We complete each of the parts:  Invitation to Notice, Invitation to Re-read, Invitation to Revise, Invitation to Imitate, and Invitation to  Edit through a 5-10 day span depending on what else we have going on.  Throughout the week I use the mentor sentence to review a specific piece of figurative language.  So far we have done similes, alliteration and onomatopoeia.  I continue in my Word Work notebook with lessons, foldable and activities that practice that particular piece of figurative language. The picture above shows my mentor sentences on one side, and then similes practice which I got from Erin at I'm Lovin' Lit.

My smarties really like doing this.  On the Invitation to Imitate day they hope they are selected to go up on the Wall of Fame.   I am beginning to see the work we put in to this in the writing we have been producing.  That's what it's all about, right!

Stop by and visit Holly and see what everyone else has Tried on this Tuesday!

2

Fitting in a little Word Work.. Halloween style

My Smarties keep 3 notebooks in ELA:  Reading, Writing and Word Work.  In our Word Work notebook we complete figurative language, analogies, homophones, and our mentor sentences.
We have been practicing really hard to review and learn similes, alliteration, and onomatopoeia this month.  It has been a big focus for us in our notebooks and our mentor sentences.
To have a little fun during Halloween I made up a set of Figurative Language cards for practice.  I introduced them this week as I began solidly meeting with my novel groups.  I meet with one novel group each day for about 20 minutes.  While we are working in group, my students are required to complete 2 word work activities for the week.  One of these activities revolves around our spelling unit, and the other I interchange.  Right now, it's my Halloween Figurative Language Pack.

My class has been doing a great job working through the similes, alliteration and onomatopoeia concentration style.  I created 6 sentences that are Halloween themed for each figurative language type. This week they are working in pairs to match the three types I have reviewed.

Sorry the picture is a little blurry, but each sentence is related to something "Halloweenish." For example:  "The witches chanted like chorus girls around the cauldron."

They also were required to put a foldable into their  Word Work Notebook.  The foldable contains a definition, and then my students were required to write an original sentence containing an example of the figurative language type.

Next week I'll actually have them put a gray-scaled copy of the similes, alliteration and onomatopoeia into the Word Work Notebook, and complete a cut and glue activity as well. I'll use the cut and glue as a little formative assessment to see if they have mastered the three figurative pieces we have been reviewing, and also to see what students are familiar with the other 3 types we have to focus on.

I'm really excited to see this use of language, along with my mentor sentences start to come out in my student's writing.  Fingers crossed it continues when I begin informational writing! If you are interested, the pack is sold in my TpT store.  

0

Homophone Hearts and a Funny Monkey Book

This week the skill in our basal reader reviews Homophones and Homonyms.  Most of my smarties in sixth grade have mastered this concept, but I have a few who still have trouble with the vocabulary meanings of some words.  I found this great book that has been perfect for them in my Word Work Center.  It helps my students who are still having trouble with the homophones, and it gives all of my students FLUENCY practice.  It can be hard to read those "double words."
Aunt Ant Leaves through the Leaves by Nancy Coffelt is about Monkey who is trying to get the animals to help him get bananas home to make a pie.  The book has the same "set up" as The Little Red Hen where all of the animals are busy.. Aunt Ant can't help because she has to visit her niece, Bee has too many things to do because his honey shipment is due... etc.



To go along with the book I made homophone hearts.  My students who needed a little extra practice read the book in small groups as they had Word Work Centers to complete.  They sorted the homophones from the story by playing memory.  Then they chose one of the pairs and wrote their own homophones to show they understood the vocabulary.  It was an easy quick way to get in a little Valentine LOVE this week.
Although the homophones are heart shaped, they ceratinly could be used any time of year in a center, and the book has no seasonal connection.  If you are interested, you can find the product in my TpT store {Here}
On another note, my smarties took an assessment today on Rational Numbers.  I am so pleased with how they did.. especially when love and lollipops (our Student Council sells them and the kiddoes get them from friends on Thursday)  seem to be all they are thinking about!
What have your smarties done this week that you are proud of?  Let me know! and share the LOVE!!

0