Where Do They Get These Ideas?

For the last week or so I have been letting the class have about 30 minutes of free choice at math tubs each morning. As one of the kids put it, "Ms. Hughes, this is just like Choosing time only with Math!" Yep, pretty much!

A group of students took a bunch of different math tubs and combined the contents to create the Appleberry Mining Co. For a few days, they were building and dismantling each time we had math. A huge undertaking believe you me! Then last week, I let them leave it and they have been adding to it since.

It has offices, a cafeteria, a smelter, a museum, bathrooms, a computer lab and its very own cave! There is also a railroad (run by a different student) to carry the ore to the mining company. I have no idea who came up with the idea but it has been super cool watching them all work together to create and run the mining company.

Especially interesting was how two of the head mining honchos dealt with the number of students who wanted to play last week. It started to get a little crazy with so many kids wanting to be in the same small space so, what did they do? Well, they laid people off, of course!!!! The laid off employees were sent off to find new work (i.e. play with a different math tub). Then, when one student was sad to be laid off, they promptly told him that the company was rehiring! (Oh, if only life was really like that, huh?)

Anywho, I took a video of the mining company and had them talk me through the space. So, take a minute and check it out. The minds of grade 1 and 2 students never cease to amaze me!

p.s. Sorry about the picture quality. I was trying to zoom in and out without getting any faces on the video. It got blurry in a couple place. My bad!

Finally Some Photos!!!!

It seems that I promised a life time ago to post some photos of our word work activities. I finally managed to remember to bring my camera home from work to download photos.

Last week was the first full week where they had to use the tic-tac-toe word work sheets. Since we missed one day of Daily 5, I let them only do 2 jobs on the board instead of 3. Every day at the start of Daily 5 I did my little spiel about how they needed to go to word work and get two jobs done. Even with me telling them EVERY single day to get the jobs done or they wouldn't get choosing time on Friday, I still had 15 students who had not completed their work. Some of them had spent over an hour at word work during the week and gotten NOTHING done!!! Not even one job or even half of a job done! Nada! Zippo! How is that even possible?

Ohmigoodness, I am convinced that the majority of the class just heard blah, blah, blah, word work, blah, blah blah!!!!!  I could have just torn my hair out and screamed when I was marking the Daily 5 books. I mean, what were they doing all week?!?!

The shock on their faces Friday morning when they realized that I was dead serious about taking away their choosing time was priceless. And the speed at which some of them started doing their word work this week was pretty funny, too! My fingers are crossed that I will not have to take away any choosing this Friday.

So, what does word work look like these days? Well we are doing jobs that require specific words using our weekly words (this week they are all with short vowel e). The tic-tac-toe sheet looks like this:

The words on this one are the more difficult level words.

Short vowel e at the beginning or inside words.

Here is a sampling of the work sheet options:

Rainbow  Writing

Clipboard Cruising

Shopping for Words

Stamp A Word

Boggle

This week we will be learning how to do Super Sentences and Magnet Words. Students will then be able to make a tic-tac-toe in three different directions.

In other subject areas, today the grade 2's started their interviews for Social Studies. One of our learning outcomes is to learn about the roles and responsibilities of people who work in our school. To that end the grade 2's have been in project teams for a week preparing questions to ask in their interviews. Today 3 teams did interviews. We had interviews with one of our kindergarten teachers, the principal and the vice-principal. Everyone did an awesome job! I am videoing the interviews so that the class can watch themselves later. I was so proud of how they all conducted themselves while our guests were visiting.

We did some really fun art today around the story Snowmen At Night by Caralyn Buehner.

We did pictures of snowmen doing different activities at night using oil pastels then we wrote about what they were doing. They turned out great! The imaginations in our class are pretty stellar. We had snowmen golfing, racing cars, playing wii, skating and more. I will upload photos soon but, in the meantime, I am going to do a bulletin board beside the office to show them off.

Anywho, that is it for now. I am off to eat some dinner and scour pinterest for more ideas. I swear it is more addictive than caffeine!

Ms. Hughes

A Word About Word Work

Last week we learned some new word work activities to do during Daily 5 in preparation for beginning Word Work Tic-Tac-Toe. (I forgot my camera today but will take pics to post soon so you can see what each activity looks like.)

Today students got their first Word Work Tic-Tac-Toe page. The tic-tac-toe board looks like this:

Find as many words as you can that have the same letter in them. Clipboard Cruising	Word Work Game Play a word work game with a friend.	Magnet Words Build your spelling words using magnets.
Rainbow Words Print your spelling words using a different colour for each letter.	Stamp each of your spelling words one time. Stamp A Word	Scoop & Spell Take one scoop of beans. Make as many words as you can. Print the words on the worksheet.
Shopping For Words Print each of your words. Figure out the cost of each letter and word. Then finish the worksheet.	Super Sentences Write a sentence for each of your spelling words. Use details!	Boggle Words Use the boggle game to get your letters. Make as many words as you can.

Except the tic-tac-toe board the kids have has pictures to go with each item on the board. It didn't copy over for some reason. Oh well! 

Beside the tic-tac-toe board is a list with this week's words on it. The list has 10 words - 8 regular words and 2 challenge words. This week all students are working on words with a short vowel a sound (as in cat and dad). I know that the words are going to be too easy for some students.  As time goes on, students will likely have different lists so that they can work on attributes of words that are relevant to their developmental level. For the next few weeks, though, we will all be doing the same lists as we learn how the Word Work Tic-Tac-Toe system works.

During Daily 5, students are now required to complete one row of tic-tac-toe word work each week. They have to do the activities using this week's words unless it is an activity where they make up words (like Boggle) or search for words (like Clipboard Cruising). Some weeks there will be different tic-tac-toe choices such as alphabetical order or word sorts etc.

As a supplement to the word work in class, I have signed up to use the website Spelling City. At the end of the day today I showed the class how to get to our word list on this site. Here are the steps:

1. Google Spelling City (or click on the link above)

2. Go to Spelling City - it is the first link that shows up when you google it

3. Click on Find A List

4. Search for the list by entering my name Olwyn Hughes

in the search box. Make sure that the second box says you are searching by teacher name!

5. Click on my name at the bottom of the screen. It will be in bright blue.

6. Go to the box that says Vocabulary and Spelling Lists (it is about half way down the page)

7. Click on the list you want.

Spelling City has lots of activities. Students can take a test, practice flash cards and play games to practice their words. Students need to make choices from the Free Choices column (I do not have a premium membership).

When you follow the instructions above, you will see that right now there is only one list (Short Vowel A) but we will be having a new set of words every Friday afternoon. I will do my best to have the students write their list into their planners each week (we didn't do that this week as I was sick last Friday).

The goal with these word lists is NOT to have students memorize words and take a test once a week. The goal is for students to practice using words that follow different word patterns and then assimilate that learning into their reading and writing. I will not be giving a weekly quiz. If your child really wants to take a quiz, then I suggest they do the test on Spelling City on Thursday evening each week before getting the new week's words on Friday afternoons.

The class was very excited to get their first Word Work Tic-Tac-Toe board today and I am hoping that they will find Spelling City to be another fun way to practice learning more about word patterns.

Thanks for all your support at home!