In helping students tune ears-and mouths and eyes, even their fingertips, their nerve endings-to the glorious range of ways they can string words together, we need to encourage them to fool around, to experiment, to break rules even before they know all the rules. Whoever knows all the rules, anyway?
Judith Rowe Michaels
These seem to be the rounds that most of us are talking about in terms of appropriate activities. Feel free to add ideas and suggestions here.
How have you introduced this to your class?
What activities are working best?
13 comments:
In Prep we obviously don't work on writing, so I've called it 'preparing for writing' and our 'word work' at the moment is learning our names. Next it will be the letters and sounds. For Prep this involves a lot of tactile letter making (eg, sand, glitter, play doh, water, paint, finger painting etc.) I give them an outline of their name or the letter to work on. Preparing for writing involves a lot of fine motor strengthening activities. www.otplan.com has an amazing selection of activities for developing the necessary skills and muscles for writing. I think we need change the mindset that once kids leave infants school their fine motor skills are fully developed. Maybe some of the older grades could think about including these kinds of activities as part of word work and work on writing. Maybe you already are!
We've been underlining words we don't know as per daily 5. Thinking about doing some magic writing, shaving foam words, group with chalk on the cement outside my classroom and the usual white boards markers on desks & windows. THink they'll enjoy the variety - but not introducing it yet - focusing on reading and writing first
Miss Winning we LOVE magic writing!
Some great ideas there Kelly. I think you are very wise to go slowly and get the reading and writing routines down pat first. Do you see these strategies useful in extending children's vocabulary? I think we sometimes take for granted that they know what some of the words they read and some of the words we say to them mean.
Deb
Hey Michelle! So great to see you adapting Daily 5 for Prep. You are so correct about fine motor skills. It's a bit of an old way of thinking that certain things pertain to just infants classes. Just today in Year 4 I noticed a number of students who had some significant fine motor issues. I think Daily 5 word work gives us some flexibility to differentiate and rediscover some great fine motor acivities whilst working on extending kids vocabulary and spelling strategies at the appropriate grade level.
Can't wait to hear how Prep respond to your Daily 5 adaptation!
Deb
I'm not sure that Daily 5 in Prep really looks like Daily 5 (certainly not yet), but I'm just trying use the same terminology and basic structure. Prep are not really at the stage of being able to do much independently at all, so my role in Daily 5 certainly looks very different to what teachers in the rest of JS will be doing. I have a couple of very cluey ones, though, who were able to contribute very sensible ideas about what it looks like when we listen to reading at the listening post.
does anyone have any good Work on writing ideas for editing - obviously we cant do peer editing because its meant to be a quiet time - thoughts?
Came across this site and thought it was beautiful. Great resource for children to use to create stories. Perhaps use during work on writing? Last year my daughter worked on writing a novel all year and the teacher published all the novels when they were finished (ie. printed and bound), but the class chose one to actually publish properly and it is in the Library. I think this a great idea as it gives purpose and motivation to their writing.
http://storybird.com/
I agree Kelly, Deb and Shell. There are many kids who need fine motor help. It is really important to keep working on these skills. I have always included fine motor skills as part of Reading Groups. Love the idea of incorporating it with word work :)
I love all those ideas! Not only do those ideas foster fine motor skills but they make learning new words enjoyable, encouraging them to find more and really expand their vocab! An idea I just saw on twitter was to give them a large word (the examples were 'valentine' and 'Super Bowl' but could be anything) and then students find as many smaller words as they can within that word. Really makes them think about what words they know and can search for! They then had them do activities such as placing them in alphabetical order, seeing who could find the most for those students that love the competition, using them in sentences etc. I was thinking they could even use a dictionary to help them find more words (e.g go to the V section and look for words with the correct letters) and choose the ones they find most interesting as a way to increase vocab?
As part of KF's word work, the children rotate through four activities including playdough, writing with textas, chalkboards and forming letters in a shallow container of salt.In this way the correct formation of the sounds taught are reinforced in a fun and educational way.
So many great ideas for Word Work! I would absolutely love to come and visit Prep Shell and see the way you're implementing the Daily Five. It sounds like you're doing an amazing job.
Noticed your concrete writing this arvo Kel! What did the kids think?
I've decided to begin my week with Word Work by having students write out all the words from their writing books that they have spelt incorrectly in the last week of writing. They use these words as the basis for their Word Work activities for the rest of their week. It feels so much more purposeful than the generic spelling lists! It means I have to ensure their writing books are marked up to date by every Monday, but I'm finding it really worthwhile. I feel like Word Work is one of the funnest parts of the Daily Five.
Another great resource found by Georgia for Word Work
http://www.uniqueteachingresources.com/Fry-1000-Instant-Words.html
And this is a terrific post regarding word work sourced from twitter #D5chat.
http://3rdgradesahoot.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/daily-5-work-on-words-and-freebies.html?m=1
I really love the Keyboard idea and boggle!
Deb
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