No Worksheet Wednesday Ideas and Link-Up

I am so so excited to be linking up with The Primary Chalkboard for the No Worksheet Wednesdays series!  How did this idea start?  It was the idea of the amazing Christina, from Sugar and Spice with Miss DeCarbo.  She had just returned from the National Reading Recovery Conference, and had picked up a few professional reading books.  Among them, was the book:

A lively and interesting discussion followed, and we all agreed that it was time to go "back to basics."  So here we are!  Future link-ups will be held on these dates:

March 11th

March 18th

March 25th

So, what did I do two Wednesdays ago in preparation for this link-up?  Well, we were still working on our Presidents' Day Flip Book.  More specifically, we were set to read and learn about the responsibilities of the president.  I knew I needed to get my second graders to a place where they could accomplish this task on Thursday:

So, before we read the text, we focused on some hands-on vocabulary building...old school style, and made Word Posters.  Here's how I did it:  

1) Required Skills Mini-Lesson:  Whole class mini-lesson on dictionary skills (abc order and guide words)

2) Guided Practice:  We did a sample poster together. I left it pretty open-ended, and told them they could represent the word in any way they thought would be helpful. (pictures, definition, examples, cut-out photographs, and even non-examples)

3) Guidelines and Expectations:  Ok, here is where I botched it up.  We do a lot of inquiry work in my classroom.  Kids are working together on a regular basis. So,  I skipped the expectations talk, and just let them get to work.  Big mistake!  I had to stop our session, pull everyone back to the carpet, and go over our rules for working together.  Here is the poster I have in my classroom.

These are the rules that we have come up with together, during the course of the year.  Each time we have a collaborative task, we always wrap it up with a discussion about our "successes" and "challenges".  Students share any issues that came up in their groups, and then students work on coming up with a solution.  We add the solutions to our poster.  This makes the rules relevant and meaningful to my students.

4) Independent Practice:  Students went off with their partners to go create their posters.  They looked up their word in a dictionary, and worked on paraphrasing what their word meant.  I made sure the poster paper was large enough so that all 3 group members could be contributing to their poster at the same time.  By leaving this task open, all students were able to participate.  I loved that even my students who struggle with reading and writing were able to add drawings and labels that represented their word, and made their learning evident.  

 All Hands On Deck = A Happy Teacher!

Here are a few finished posters:

Think the poster above is a little bare?  That's ok, because we will add examples and character's names throughout the year who demonstrate this trait!

"collaborative"

Their posters were seriously cute and authentic (not perfect), and they loved making them!  As a teacher, the discussions I heard while walking around were rich and meaningful.  Students were negotiating, compromising, agreeing and disagreeing respectfully, and coming to a consensus. 

5) Group Presentations:  Each group was then asked to present their word to the class.  Each student was expected to contribute to their group's presentation.  After the group is done, we use a wonderful idea I got from Stephanie Harvey.  After students share, the audience may respond with:

a) Comment 

b) Connection (In my classroom, this has become "Important Connection", to make sure we stay focused on the big ideas) 

c) Question, 

d) I also added the option of "Suggestion".  The audience members usually have lots of suggestions for each group.  

After all groups had finished, I gave all of the groups an additional 5 minutes to add any ideas to their posters.  These posters now hang in our classroom, and are a great focus wall for character trait discussions during our ELA block.

6) Debrief:  Don't forget to go over the "successes and challenges" of working together.

The next day, we were all set to read!  We did a quick review of the words using a Powerpoint that I had made (which I will get into in a future post).  (BTW: My approach to vocabulary instruction is based on the work of Isabel Beck.  If you have not read her book...it is amazing!) Affiliate link below.

With all of this background knowledge about the vocabulary, the students did a wonderful job finding text evidence to complete our reading task, the following day!

To learn more about vocabulary instruction or the Let's Learn about Presidents' Day Flip Book, click here or on the image below.

Here is a little freebie poster that you could use in your room for having students respond to each other.  This poster works well for all subject areas, including math!  

Don't forget to check out all of these other amazing No Worksheet Wednesday ideas. (click below)

Nicole

Presidents' Day Fun!

The question of the hour is... Are you all ready for Presidents' Day?  Yes?  Wow!  Heck, I'm not even ready for Valentine's Day!  Some of you are uber-efficient planners, and I do aspire to your efficiency, and skills of forethought.  However, I find myself severely challenged in this area.

Lucky for you, I've made an extra special effort, and have been looking ahead to February 16th, Presidents' Day - Hey, that is a whole 12 days from now!  Woohoo! I present...

So, one of the things I have been making lately are tabbed flip books.  My students love these!  So, I figured why not continue on, and make one for Presidents' Day? Oila! Click on the picture below to learn more.

This book is geared at 2nd/3rd grade, and contains 4 informational passages with text dependent questions.  It also has compare & contrast, persuasive/opinion writing, and a presidential research graphic organizer option.

This flip book is a wonderful opportunity to teach some important Tier 2 (basically, that means high-utility words worth teaching) vocabulary words. So obviously, I can't just leave without sharing some ideas for vocabulary instruction.

Several years ago, I purchased Isabel Beck's vocabulary instruction series (Don't bother searching for it - I believe it has been discontinued. Although, you may be able to find it "used" on Amazon). It is pretty awesome! What I love about vocabulary instruction, "a la Isabel Beck," is that she encourages the creation of multiple connections to new words, and that the majority of the practice is accomplished orally. This results in students having a much deeper and flexible understanding of the word, and its possible meanings.  Here are some ideas that you can use with any vocabulary word.

1. Choose new vocabulary words (Tier 2) from your read-alouds.

2. Keep a class poster with columns for the vocabulary words, a short, student-friendly definition, and tally marks for each time someone in the class uses one of the words correctly. (We call this "Our Word Collection" poster.)

NOTE: I will be using the word "collaborative," to demonstrate each activity below. But, as mentioned above, you can do these activities with any word.

A. Hold up a picture of people collaborating. (I search Google Images.) Ask, "How can you tell these people are working collaboratively?" (Notice that I am using a different form of the target word. This develops flexibility, and is important!)

B. Link vocabulary words to gestures. Tell students that you will name some situations, and if they are "collaborative," they should say "collaborative," and link their two hands together. If the situation does not demonstrate the word "collaborative," they should do nothing. (Notice below that the target word is used in different contexts, one familiar, and another outside of school. This little trick also supports a more flexible understanding of the target word.)

• Two students are studying together for the math test.
• Tom and Jan argue over who gets to be first in line.
• Four people carrying a heavy box out to the moving truck.

C. Have students talk to a partner about a time they had to collaborate with someone. How did it feel? What did it look like?

D. Find an image of two or more people arguing. Ask, "Are these people being collaborative? How do you know?" (Having students discuss both images that are representative, AND non-examples of the target word, creates a deeper understanding of the target word.)

E. Have students pantomime working both collaboratively and non-collaboratively. Have the rest of the students comment on the differences. 

For all of the above activities, make sure students are held accountable for using the target word in their discussions!

If you want to have your students keep track of your daily/weekly words, I have a Powerpoint with a form that I have used in the past. (Now, in the interest of time, I just keep the classroom chart mentioned above.) The first page shows how I used to scaffold for my students by providing some of the information for them. This saved us so much time! The second page has been left blank, and is completely editable. I hope some of you will find it useful. Click below to download a copy.

If you want to learn about other vocabulary activities I do with my students, head over to the post by clicking on the image below.

Thank you for stopping by,

Nicole 

Wednesday Website Linky Party

Trying to get this blog rolling, and found a great linky party to participate in, hosted by Tessa at Tales from Outside the Classroom.  This linky party features great websites for teachers, students, and their families.

So, I have a great website for teachers. 

This site is absolutely amazing for providing differentiated learning opportunities for students, and finding small group intervention lessons.  I hesitated to share it, because I thought surely everyone must know about it by now.  But, I thought just in case you don't, it would be worth it to put it out there one more time. It is the Florida Center for Reading Research, or FCRR.  

Click on the image and look over at the right side bar, and you will see a link for Instructional  Materials for Teachers. Click it, and another link for Students Center Activities should appear.  Those activities are further divided into grade levels K-1, 2-3, 4-5.  They have a very comprehensive collection of activities and lessons that cover everything from phonemic awareness to fluency and comprehension.  Our school actually made us spiral bound copies of all of their lessons for our grade level.  Which is very nice, because there is A LOT of material on this website.

Also, while you are there, take a look at their document detailing the alignment between the site's activities and the Common Core!  

Check out more websites by clicking the linky button!

See ya,

100 Followers Celebration Freebie!

My kids were sitting down eating their special weekend breakfast, and I snuck over to the computer to check up on things.  And....Oh my goodness, I have 100 followers!  How did that happen?  Yippeee!

Wow, I am so grateful for each one of you.  Blogging has turned out to be another part-time job, but a rewarding one.  I have met so many wonderful people on-line, and have received countless gems of advice from kind, fellow bloggers. 

When I first saw that I was at 100 followers, to be honest, I panicked.  I didn't have a giveaway in mind.  But, looking through my desktop, I found something that you all might like to have...as a thank you gift from me.

My Parts of Speech Flip Book has been downloaded over 1800 times.  If you haven't downloaded it yet, click on the image below.

Anyway, I received such a nice reaction to the original flip book, that I decided to create a follow up book.  My Vocabulary Flip Book.  This mini-word wall booklet presents compound words, synonyms, antonyms, and homophones.  There is an instructional cover page, and mini-word wall to be filled in by students for each vocabulary skill.  I intended this book to be part of a vocabulary unit I am working on.  But, never you mind.  We are celebrating!  Put out the cloth napkins and good china! 

Just click any of the sample images below to download your copy. 

I hope you and your students enjoy this little book.

Once again, thank you so much for following my little blog.  Ok, now I am off to make some more pancakes!

Have a great weekend,

Nicole