Week 2

Onomatopoeias

During Week 2, I taught a few lessons but my favorite was when I used a mentor text to teach the students about how to use onomatopoeias (the creation of words that imitate natural sounds or actions) in their own writing. The students had a lot of fun with this, making all kinds of noises to help come up with examples like “Crash!”, “Pow!”, “Woof!”, etc. The mentor text I used was called Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! By Candace Fleming. It was full of onomatopoeias, which the students helped me identify at the end. For the follow-up activity, students wrote their own pieces of writing and had to include at least three examples of an onomatopoeia. They could choose to write a poem, a story, or something of their own free-choice. This was part of my formative assessment for the lesson. This lesson is also a prerequisite for my owl unit because we will be doing more work with onomatopoeias, describing the different sounds owls make (after listening to real owl call recordings!)

This week, I observed an activity that I know I will use in my future classroom: “Musical Spelling.” It is a fun, engaging way to have students do drill and practice with their spelling words (not to mention an excellent way to get some of their energy out!) Here's how it works:

Each seat has a mini whiteboard and marker. Under each whiteboard there is a different spelling word from that month's list (cut out and placed underneath). The students dance around the desks while the music is playing and when the music stops, they run to one of the seats, flip that whiteboard over, and write the given word over and over again as many times as they can. Once the music begins again, the students erase their board, flip it over, and continue dancing. Each time the music stops they are to run to a seat they haven't been to yet. I thought this was brilliant and the kids had a blast with it. Whoever said drill and practice is a yawn, clearly hasn't been to Room 8!

Did I mention that last Friday was Wacky Hair Day? See for yourselves... I can hardly handle the awesomeness. (Not to mention how genius the kids are who decided to just not brush their hair that morning because it was "crazy enough when they woke up." They're onto something.)