Liebster Award, Compound Words, Contractions and more…

As a new blogger it made me feel extremely special last night when I received a very nice comment on my blog from Tammy at http://www.123teachwithme.com/.  It is wonderful to know that somebody finds my blog interesting and worth commenting on, so MUCHISIMAS GRACIAS Tammy!

 Maybe I’m the only one, but I wasn’t sure what Liebster translated to – so I checked it out, because I’m a language nerd…it’s German for “favorite”.   
Part of the Liebster award’s awesomeness is that I now need to nominate other bloggers with less than 200 followers.  
Here are the rules to the award:
1. Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog – see above (thanks again Tammy!) 2. Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you – (just in case you missed it, here is Tammy’s link again..http://www.123teachwithme.com/
3. Copy and paste the blog award on your blog  - see above 4. Present the Liebster Blog Award to up to 5 blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve to be noticed  - see below 5. Let them know they have been chosen by leaving a comment at their blog.  On my to do list!


Here are 4 great blogs that have wonderful resources on their site.  Be sure to swing by their blogs and check out all the amazing things they have going on!


Ms. Apples at Elementary Apples
The Bilingual Teacher Clubhouse
Jennie at JD’s Rockin’ Readers
Kris at Teaching With Love 


Onto other things…I wanted to share some fun images of what we’ve been doing in class.  I found some cool activities through pinterest for compound words and contractions – which I’m sure you all have seen, but I’m still a proud teacher and want to share!


We used the dowloadable compound word sort from the first grade parade.  Unfortunately I was out the day my kiddos did this, but based on the sub report they loved the activity and were experts by the time they did the flippy book.

We’ve also just started working on contractions.  Contractions are hard for native Spanish speakers, because they don’t exist in Spanish.  For example, my husband is studying English and big time dislikes contractions! I think they seem like a lazy way of speaking to a nonnative speaker and it's not always obvious how to make a contraction or how to decide which two words made a contraction – but either way my kids need to learn them!


They LOVED doing the contraction surgery.  I found this activity on pinterest and on different blogs, I'm not sure who thought it up, but that person is brilliant! 


We talked a lot about how the two words change to become one.  I modeled how to conduct surgery on the words and had the students work in partners.  We had superhero and princess band-aids for apostrophes, very exciting stuff!

Unfortunately, after the whole activity about half of my class was struggled to identify what the original two words were that made the contraction…so our final contractions are now posted on the wall with the two original words – so my kids have a reference…otherwise they can’t transfer back and forth from two words to a contraction and vice versa…English is HARD!  My kids understand the concept but just can’t make the leap between the two forms without a reference…baby steps!

I previosly alluded to a grumpy cat activity we've been working on and I'm worried because I cannot find the kids' final draft of their writing anywhere!!!!  I'm giving it one more day and then I might have to make my kids redo the writing, because we have the artwork with no writing at this point - where could it have gone?!?!  Honestly, this is a wonderful example of why my room needs a major clutter intervention!


Cheers!
Mrs. Castro Pin It

Weird Week, Vocabulary Stories

As a teacher I do not love weeks that do not follow the normal routine.  I never thought I would become routine oriented person, but I dread these weeks that completely throw the routine out of the window!

This week we had President’s Day off – which I appreciate, OF COURSE!  

We had a teacher plan day on Tuesday – quality planning time is a good thing.  

Wednesday was a district meeting for all primary bilingual teachers, necessary but…how I wish I didn’t have to miss a day with my kids!  

I’ll be with the kiddos tomorrow, but am out Friday for a personal day.  

Which translates to my students will be with me for one day and with a substitute for two days - DISLIKE this ratio!  Ok, I had to vent...but alas it is out of my control and I'm moving on.

These types of weeks are usually a challenge for me to plan for.  LUCKILY, I found all sorts of cute ideas on different blogs that inspired me and I know my students had fun without me today. This week my students will be working on making connections and compound words, big time!  

Here is what I left for the sub, we’ll se how it turned out tomorrow…

Compound Words - students will be discovering compound words with the book Flying Butter and If You Take a  Mouse to the Movies.  We'll see how many they discovered tomorrow - fingers crossed they were working hard.  After that I was inspired by this blog post by the First Grade Parade where students make flip books to show how two words make one word, so I'll see how those turned out tomorrow.

 I also wanted to share a couple of images of our vocabulary stories.  We started using the Isabel Beck vocabulary instruction kit in January.  I was hesitant because although the words are AMAZING my students are all second language learners - and such rich vocabulary can sometimes be overwhelming out of context.  BUT this was definitely a case of me selling my kids short!  They absolutely love this vocabulary.  They're constantly using the words throughout the day hoping for a chance to clip-up by making a super impressive sentence (I've become harder to impress as the weeks go by).  

With language learners it is so important to teach words within context, so one of the activities we do during the week is we write a story using these words.  Again, I wasn't sure how this was going to turn out, but it turns out this is one of my absolute favorite activities of the week, and I think it's safe to say my kids would agree!

We try to write a funny story including all of the vocabulary words.  We brainstorm together and it turns into a fun shared writing and reading activity.  I took a couple pictures of our stories, somehow I missed my favorite about one of my students challenging me to a dance war...maybe another time.  

They really are ridiculous - but so much fun.  The kids love having their names in the story!  Unfortunately, with this short week no new vocabulary (another reason to prefer regular weeks) - but next week awaits with great words like: 

tidy

irk

admire

chuckle

astonished

coincidence

Won't the third grade teachers be impressed when my second language students show up saying how astonished they are by the tidy classrooms and how irked they were by the chaos in mine, inspite of the this they still have to admire me and chuckle at my ridiculousness...

Cheers,

Mrs. Castro

Pin It