Novel Study
For Language Arts one of the projects was a novel study on the book "Ticket to Curlew" in which students were required to fill in a flip book outlining the main characters, setting, and the main events of each chapter. During the lessons I would try to plan a quick mini lesson or activity to incorporate word work or language skills. During one lesson I selected students who were working extremely hard and being attentive listeners to come up and select a verb and an adverb (which also listed synonyms of the word) and students would act out the verb and adverb they selected, while the class tried to guess what they were acting out - Verb/Adverb Charades. Students really enjoyed this activity and engaged the entire class. If students struggled with the adverb I would put up a single letter up at a time so students had clues to the word but still had to think about what the word could be, rather than simply telling them. (KSA 5 & 9)
The anchor chart with yellow sticky notes was a form of formative assessment that I used. Students were required to write about a part of the story that was either funny (LOL), important (*), surprising (!), a favourite part (<3), a confusing part (?), or a part that makes them predict (thought bubble) and used symbols so students could draw the symbol on their sticky note to the part they were answering. This assessment informed me of how the students are seeing different parts of the story and has them recall the different events of the stories. It also allows students to predict what might happen next based on the events that have been happening. It was a quick way to check in with students on their learning and their interests in order to further tailor the following lessons. (KSA 11 & 15)
The anchor chart with yellow sticky notes was a form of formative assessment that I used. Students were required to write about a part of the story that was either funny (LOL), important (*), surprising (!), a favourite part (<3), a confusing part (?), or a part that makes them predict (thought bubble) and used symbols so students could draw the symbol on their sticky note to the part they were answering. This assessment informed me of how the students are seeing different parts of the story and has them recall the different events of the stories. It also allows students to predict what might happen next based on the events that have been happening. It was a quick way to check in with students on their learning and their interests in order to further tailor the following lessons. (KSA 11 & 15)
Mini-Lessons
In Language Arts I would have mini lessons and then have students complete an activity after. For our singular and plural noun lesson I used a poem to help students remember the difference between singular and plural. We underlined the nouns that were singular and the nouns that were plural. I had students repeat the poem together as a class and had it recorded in their booklets so they had it for future reference. Following the poem we reviewed the 8 rules of converting singular nouns to plural and then played the game "Kaboom" where students could work together with their pod groups to convert their noun to try and acquire the most nouns possible by the end of the game. Followed by independent conversion work. (KSA 5 & 6)
Singular and Plural Nouns Poem