Book Of The Week: If I Were President

If I Were President by Catherine Steir

With the upcoming election, I've spent the last week heavily focusing on the election process.  We've implemented it in our language arts class with an emphasis on vocabulary, comparing/contrasting, and writing as well as in our math class.  On Tuesday, the students will get to participate in a school-wide voting process complete with ballots and booths.  I'm so excited for them to have this experience!  

This week's book of the week is a bit different.  There is a two-part FREEBIE in our TPT store for you!  The first part is a vocabulary activity that targets 12 vocabulary words in the form of the game "I have-who has..."

The second part is a writing activity with the prompt, "If I Were President..."  (I'm sure you wouldn't have guessed that!)  Included is a graphic organizer and paper for a final copy.

Some of the students needed a bit more scaffolding, so I provided a simple introductory sentence for them.  They really enjoyed this activity, and I equally enjoyed reading their ideas!  As long as they were able to give a (somewhat) reasonable reason, I went with it!

If you don't own the book, you can watch the video here!

Book Of The Week: The Kiss That Missed

The Kiss That Missed by David Melling

Summary:
The little Prince misses his dad's hurried but royal goodnight kiss.  The kiss sails through his room and out the window.  The loyal Knight is summoned to retrieve the kiss through the wild woods filled with big and hungry animals.  His adventure continues on his mission to save the kiss!

Vocabulary:

• squawk-to complain loudly
• mount-to climb
• gallop-to ride a horse at full speed
• hot pursuit-following closely to catch someone
• swoop-to move down suddenly from above as if to attack
• leer-to look or smile in a sneaky and untrusting way
• lumber-to move in a clumsy way

Questions:

What were the characters' names?  Why do you think the author did that?

When did the story take place?  Use evidence from the illustrations.

Why do you think the King was always in a hurry?

Why do you think the King had the Knight follow the kiss instead of giving the Prince a new kiss?

What kind of knight was the Knight?  How do you know that?

Give two words to describe the dragon.

How would the story's ending have changed if the dragon was not friendly and helpful?

Extension activities:

Storyline Online

Sequencing (from Pitner's Potpourri)

http://www.kansasread.org/pdf/BMJ_2004/thekiss.pdf

Riddle Me This!

Who are we kidding?  We love to have fun in our room!  We have found that a healthy balance of laughter and learning has been the near perfect combination to establishing a light, fun, and positive learning environment for students.

We often have students who come to us with IEP goals that focus on figurative language, which can be a struggle (and not very effective) when taught in isolation.  While we do our best to incorporate figurative language into our daily conversation and relate them to our lessons, it remains a challenge.

We have found that working on figurative language, multiple meaning words, and problem solving is so much more fun when incorporated with a little humor through our weekly joke and riddle posts.  The students in our  room love them.  They have also attracted the attention of other students in the school, allowing us to interact with and be more visible to all students. These jokes and riddles have really motivated the students in our room!

We compiled our favorite jokes and riddles into a product that includes 40 riddle and answer cards, 40 joke and answer cards, Joker and Riddler icons, and "Riddle Me This!" and "Jokin’ Around!" banners.  You can arrange the icons and banners on a wall, bulletin board, or wherever you chose to display them.  We display a new joke and riddle every Monday and post the answers every Friday.  They have very quickly become a hit around the school!  If you'd like to check them out, visit our TpT store here!

Importance of Early Vocabulary Development

"Thirty Million Words" was the title of an article sitting in my inbox last evening as I checked email. My thought at first was that it was a typo. There are only 50,000 or so words in the English language. It was not a typo, but something entirely different. As I read I learned how important this number actually is for vocabulary development. In the mid 1990's a set of researchers set out to quantify how many words a child hears in early development and if that correlated with socioeconomic status. What they found was that there is a big "gap" in the amount of words heard by children in low income families compared to those in middle class and affluent homes. As it turned out by age four, children born into low income families hear roughly 30 million fewer words overall. Other research in the 2000's shows that this vocabulary gap then correlated to bigger gaps in learning in school with reading and comprehension. For some students their gap in achievement then becomes so big that they are never able to catch up and may drop out before graduating. 

There is hope through a new initiative called the "Thirty Million Word Initiative" or TMW-Initiative, which is a parent coaching program to help parents continue to talk and read to their children. If you are interested in learning more, please check out this quick video below about how the TMW-Initiative works or check out the website at http://tmw.org/tmw-initiative/:

Additional Resources:

http://www.npr.org/2013/12/29/257922222/closing-the-word-gap-between-rich-and-p

Word Clouds

I have found the use of word clouds to be a powerful tool for my students who struggle to find meaning from a text. It is a great visual strategy that combines art with vocabulary. I find it really pulls my students in and gets them excited with what we are doing.

What is a Word Cloud? 

Well a word cloud is a visual way of organizing text into a picture. The bigger the word the more frequently it was used in the text. This makes common ideas or themes from a text easy to spot for older students. Here is how I have used them:

All about Me Poems: 

I have students think of their own describers for themselves and then have the students put it in a word cloud.

Making Predictions:

Here is one I created for Goldilocks and the Three Bears to show elementary students before reading the story to make predictions about what it might be about.

Here is one from  a news article to help with prediction:

Teaching Vocabulary:

Here is one with Earth Day vocabulary that I will have my students look at and then we can discuss the words they know and those they want to know.

Comparing/Contrasting:

Compare two characters from a book. Have students look up character traits and describe characters. Share with the group to compare and contrast. These examples are of Percy Jackson and his friend Annabeth. 

Summarizing: 

 I have students use these to create a quick summary of the text they read by copying the text from their ipad into a word cloud app, then have them describe the key points they notice. The bigger words are the most frequently used.

Inferencing:  

Make an inference game with common describer words. Have students guess the animal or object.

Here are some other helpful resources:

http://www.teachthought.com/literacy-2/19-interesting-ways-to-use-word-clouds-for-learning/

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/reading-teaching-strategy

http://edutech4teachers.edublogs.org/files/2012/10/Edutopia-Top-10-Tips-for-New-Media-color-ugzygq.pdf

Overused Words or Worn Out Words

WORN-OUT WORDS

Our students often overuse words when describing a character's feelings or when retelling a story. We call them Worn-Out Words because they have been used already. The most common we see in our speech room are describer words and connector words (and or then). Here are our top 20 Worn-Out Words and a few activity ideas to get your students out of the habit of using these words.

1. happy
2. good
3. fun
4. dad
5. mad
6. big
7. little
8. fast
9. pretty
10. bad
11. nice
12. cool
13. awesome
14. and
15. next
16. then
17. boring
18. smart
19. mean
20. fine

Organize:

Make a synonym chart for each student so they have it as a reference. Have each student come up with their top Worn-Out Words. Have them look up 3 synonyms to go with each one. Then keep it in their Writing folder or Speech folder for a quick reference. Here is one way to do it easily:

Fold a piece of paper (so there are 6 boxes)

Write one Worn-Out Word in each box along with 3 alternative words

Make a Worn-Out or Tired Word Wall:

If you hear a word being used too much send it to the Worn-Out Wall. This not our idea, but is still amazing:

                                                   
                                                         Here is where we found it.

Rewrite A Fairytale: 

Take The Three Bears or Little Red Hen find Worn-Out Words and then have students replace them

Example :

 Here is where we found it.

March Madness Speech Ideas

This week on March 18th, NCAA Basketball tournament will be starting. Here in the 2SpeakRight speech room, we are getting into the March Madness through vocabulary and our favorite basketball IPAD app.   One of our favorite sources for all things vocabulary is Vocabulary.com. They compiled this list with a basketball theme. Our plan is to give students this list and have them find two words they do not know. Using the internet and graphic organizers, they will share/explain their new words to their language group.  (See our TpT store for free vocabulary graphic organizers to use with this activity):  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/FREEBIE-Vocabulary-Graphic-Organizers-1158848

An Alphabet for March Madness 

A) Alternate, Announcement, Assist, Athlete, Athletics, 

B) Balance, Ball, Basketball, Battle, Buzzer

C) Competition, Championship, Clinch, Clutch, Coach, Collapse,

D) Defeat, Defense, Defensive, Distraction, Divisional, Dribble, 

E) Elimination, Endurance, Energy, Errors, Exciting, 

F) Fan Favorite, Finalist, Foul, Framework, Free throw, Fumble,

G) Games, Goal, Goodwill, Grip, Gymnasium

H)  High-stakes, Hone, Hoops, Host, 

I) Imagination, Individual, Injury, Interception, Invalidate

J) Jargon, Jerk, Judgment, Jump

K) Keep, Key, Klutz

L) Leader, League, Legend, Lopsided, Lose, Lucky

M) Magic, Margin, Message, Maximize, Measure, Minimize, Monitor, 

    Motivate, Motivation,

N) National, Nemesis, Normalcy

O) Offensive, Official, Opportunity, Opt, Optimism, Option, Outbreak, 

    Outstanding

P) Play, Playoff, Possession, Pickup-game

Q) Quads, Quick, Quiver

R) Rank(ing), Rebound, Recognition, Record, Recovery

S) Sanitary, Satisfaction, Save, Scare, Scheme, Scholarship, Score(s),

T) Team, Teammate, Technical,  Three-pointer, Time, Timeout, Timing, 

U) Unbelievable, Uniform, Unique, Unrestricted, Unusual

V) Valiant, Valor, Vibration, Victory, Violation, Votes  

W) Waive, Warm up, Wining, Wisdom, Work, Workout, Wrist  

X) X-ray

Y) Yelling, Youth 

Z) Zeal, Zone

During March Madness we also will be using this Ipad App to shoot some hoops. It works great as a reinforcer......

Arcade Hoops Basketball by Skyworks. 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/arcade-hoops-basketball-free/id306126286?mt=8

 
 

O)	Official, Officiate

P)	Performance, Physicality, Pick, Predict, Procedure, Professional

Q)

Quick

R)	Region, Replay, Right, Rule book, Rules

S)	Season, Sports, Staff, Stress, Style, Subjectivity

T)	Tactics, Target, Team, Tenure, Tight, Tournament, Training

U)	Uniformity

V)	Vet, Video

W)	Watching, Wrong

X)

Y)

Z)

Zeal

- See more at: http://www.myvocabulary.com/word-list/referees-vocabulary/#sthash.yLRACUFd.dpuf

O)	Official, Officiate

P)	Performance, Physicality, Pick, Predict, Procedure, Professional

Q)

Quick

R)	Region, Replay, Right, Rule book, Rules

S)	Season, Sports, Staff, Stress, Style, Subjectivity

T)	Tactics, Target, Team, Tenure, Tight, Tournament, Training

U)	Uniformity

V)	Vet, Video

W)	Watching, Wrong

X)

Y)

Z)

Zeal

- See more at: http://www.myvocabulary.com/word-list/referees-vocabulary/#sthash.yLRACUFd.dpuf