Article posted November 8, 2010 at 07:49 PM GMT0 •
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I can't believe how fast this school year has been going. Since starting this new position I have been training teachers on the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System. Now that everyone is trained we are ready to begin in-servicing teachers on the Balanced Literacy model. Each month we will be focusing on one component of the model. This month we are learning about Word Walls in the Gr. 1-8 classroom. Word walls are a collection of words that are displayed in the classroom. We used word walls in our classroom as it supports the teaching of important general principles about words and how they work. In Gr. 1-3 classrooms, daily word wall activity should take about 10 minutes out of your word block time.
I would like this blog to become interactive with teachers. Please share your word wall activities in the comment section.
Grade 1-3 Word Wall Activity: The Wheel
•Draw blanks on the board to represent the letters in a Word Wall word.
•Have students make the same number of blanks on their paper.
•Let students ask for letters.
•If a letter is there, write in it the appropriate blank and have that student ask again.
•Students can continue to ask until they ask for a letter that is not in the word.
•The next student then asks for a letter.
•The winner is the first person to say and spell the word correctly. This person gets to pick the next word and be the “teacher”.
Grade 4-8: Mystery Word
Introduce a new word by writing letters in a scrambled order. To assist students in unscramling the word, give clues, either about the word's meaning or about how it is spelled.
Article posted November 8, 2010 at 07:49 PM GMT0 •
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Article posted September 21, 2010 at 04:16 AM GMT0 •
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This year I am stepping away from my own classroom and I will be working as a Literacy Coach for my school division. I will have about 12 schools to manage. I will continue this blog site, but it will take on a new look.
The focus of this blog will be the teaching practices and strategies in the ELA classroom that I will be modeling. I will be posting the different books,ideas, practices and strategies as I teach them. I am hoping that everyone will still continue to add comments and ideas as I go through this new journey. If anyone has any great ideas that they would like to share, feel free to contact me.
Let the literacy journey begin :)
Article posted September 21, 2010 at 04:16 AM GMT0 •
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Article posted June 17, 2010 at 01:54 AM GMT0 •
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Today our reading buddies joined us for some fun learning about oobleck. We first learned how to make oobleck and wrote a recipe. Next we learned about solids and liquids. Oobleck is interesting as it can be both. Check out our videos about what we had to do with the oobleck.
Article posted June 16, 2010 at 03:32 AM GMT0 •
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Mrs. M. a painter came to our class to teach us about mixing colour. We learned about the primary and secondary colours. We also learned that by mixing black or white with a colour it will either make it darker or brighter.
Customize a picture collage
Article posted June 16, 2010 at 03:32 AM GMT0 •
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Article posted May 29, 2010 at 05:22 PM GMT0 •
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We have been learning about the many 2D and 3D shapes. At the end of our unit we got to construct a building, counting all of our edges, vertices and faces.
Check out our collage of buildings we created.
Article posted May 6, 2010 at 08:57 PM GMT0 •
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Today our buddy class in Bethlehem, PA asked us a question: What is our favourite subject in school? Since we are studying about bar graphs we decided to show them our favourite by graphing our class results.
We discovered that P.E. is our favourite, Art is our second favourite, then Reading and Science came in last of our favourite subjects in school.
Take a look at our bar graph we made.
Article posted May 6, 2010 at 08:57 PM GMT0 •
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Article posted May 6, 2010 at 03:26 AM GMT0 •
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Success, we just had our first virtual skype visit with author Kenn Nesbitt. He spent his time with us reading his favourite poems and answering our questions.
Our favourite poem is called:My Elephant Thinks I'm Wonderful. Your can check out his poems on this site: www.poetry4kids.com.
Here are some pictures and video of our skype visit!
